
Class _i 

Book M 



N°_ 






COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



OR 

WHAT ARE WE TO BELIEVE ? 



BY 

JOHN URQUHART, 

AUTHOR OF 

The Inspiration and Accuracy of the Holy Scriptures \ The Bible y 

its Structure and Purpose, The New Biblical Guide , etc. 
r 

Member, of the Victoria Institute, etc. 



GbfrD BDitfon, IRevfeed 

Fifteenth Thousand. 



44 Under the Christian religion I find actual prophecy, and 

I FIND IT IN NO OTHER."-P(J5W/. 






Hew l£orfc: 

GOSPEL PUBLISHING HOUSE, 

D. T. Bass, Manager, 

54 West Twenty-Second Street. 






OCT 1 )906 
QLMS 4 XX«J. N» 



CONTENTS. U' 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I.— A Serious Question. 

Sometimes asked in Despair — Trials of Wtly 
Faith — Ministerial Difficulties— The Demand fov -an 
Answer . . . . . . . . . . c 

CHAPTER II. — Can the Question be An5.*vei*/j>? 

Certainty sometimes attained — Bishop Newton jmd 
Marshal Wade — The future completely hid from hu- 
man view — What is proved if the future has neverthe- 
less been fully read ? . . . . . , 8 

CHAPTER., III. — Predictions Regarding 1 yle and 
Sidon: *.-. 

Illustration of the kind of evidence available : *he 
Stones, and Dust of Tyre to be laid in the S';a — We 
limit oiirselves to Prophecies fulfilled at and smce the 
beginning of the Christian era — Tyre to be built no 
more — Sidon to continue but to suffer — What if tne 
two Names had changed places? .. .. 15 

CHAPTER IV. — Predictions Regarding Egypt. 

Fate of Thebes — Egypt's Doom of Decline — The 
Kingdom not to be Extinguished — Its Degradation — 
To have no Native Ruler . . . . . . . . 22 

CHAPTER V. — Predictions Regarding Egypt. 
(Continued.) 

Fate of Memphis — The Rivers and the Canals of 
Egypt — The Verdure on the River Banks — The Fish- 
eries of Egypt — Its remaining Industries — The Deso- 
lation of the surrounding Countries — The Desolation 
of Egypt itself — The Character of its Masters — -Their 
Nationality — Their Work — Summary . . . . 44 



IV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VI. — Idumea and the Sea-Coast of 
Palestine. 

The Commerce of Idumea to cease — The Race to 
become extinct — The Land to be a Desolation — The 
Doom of the Philistines — The Remnant of the Sea- 
Coast to be Destroyed — The Country to be Desolate, 
while its Fruitfulness is to remain — The Present 
Aspect of the Land and the Purpose which it serves 
described in Prophecy — Predictions regarding Asca- 
lon, Ekron, and Gaza , . , , . , . . 93 



CHAPTER VII.— Judea and Babylon. 

The cessation of the Jewish Worship, and the deso- 
lation of the Jewish sanctuaries — The Israelites up- 
rooted from the land — Their enemies to dwell in it — 
Its cities to be a waste and the land a desolation — 
The duration of the desolation — Judea to be a land 
of pilgrimages — The doom of Bethel, of Samaria, of 
Capernaum, and of Jerusalem — Fate of Mount Mor- 
iah and of Zion — The destruction of the Temple 
and the continued oppression of Jerusalem — Julian's 
attempt to defeat the prophecy — Babylon: Its deso- 
lation to be utter and lasting — The process of its 
demolition described — A burnt mountain — To become 
the prey of many nations — All that spoil her to be 
satisfied — The awful desolation of Chaldea .. .. in 



CHAPTER VIII. — A Prophetic Forecast of the 
World's Entire History. 

The Book of Daniel — Supposed critical triumph — 
Nebuchadnezzar's dream — Interpretation of the para- 
ble^ — The four empires named in Scripture — The 
Roman to be the last merely human world-dominion 
— The character of the fourth kingdom— Its novelty, 
terribleness, strength, and tyranny — The division of 
the empire — Its continuance — The number of its frag- 
ments — A miracle of insight: The childhood, boy- 
hood, youth, manhood, and old age of history ,. 151 



CONTENTS. V 

CHAPTER IX. — Prophecies Fulfilled in the 
Coming, the History, and the Work of Christ. 

The age of the Old Testament writings — The Mes- 
sianic prophecies — The nations to cast away their 
idols — The revolution to be the work of one man — 
And He to be a Jew — The time of His death predicted 
— His history foretold — His lowliness and poverty — 
Rejected by Israel — Dies by violence, and under a 
judicial sentence — His work described — He lives and 
saves . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 



CHAPTER X. — Predictions Fulfilled in the 
History of the Jews. 

Their importance — The Jews' rejection of Jesus — 
Its long continuance — Their punishment — The instru- 
ments of it — The mercilessness of the instruments 
of vengeance — The Jews to be taken back to Egypt 
"in ships" — Characteristics of the war: its sieges; the 
method of attack — The Jews to suffer the extremities 
of famine, and to be left few in number — Their uni- 
versal dispersion — Their preservation — Their separ- 
ateness — Their treatment in the lands of their sojourn 
— To be compelled to pollute themselves with idolatry 
— To have no rest — To be deprived of any central 
government — To be deprived of sacrifice, and holy- 
place, and priest — Conclusion .. ,. ..215 



CHAPTER I. 

A SERIOUS QUESTION. 

It is sometimes asked in petulant indolence. The 
writer has a vivid recollection of its being put by a 
rather feeble, and not very worthy, member of a country 
church. He possessed a copy of "Brown's Bible/' 
and it was a favourite exercise with him to spend 
Sunday afternoon in comparing the exposition he 
had heard in the morning with the remarks in the 
commentary. These did not always agree, and 
disagreement was never noted without annoyance. 
One Sunday there chanced to be a more than ordinarily 
wide divergence. The minister happened to call a day 
or two afterwards, and, having spent his strength in 
explaining and defending the position he had dared to 
take in defiance of "Brown," he was rewarded by the 
exclamation : "What are we to believe !" 

It might be well for all men, and it would certainly 
be more agreeable to many, were there no divergent 
opinions. But it is not well for any man, when he 
discovers that all do not think alike, to faint amid the 
strife of tongues and to "throw the whole thing up." 
There are few truths which have not had to run the 
gauntlet of controversy ; and those truths are our pos- 
session to-day solely because there happened to be men 
who, while thev loved peace, would not part with con- 
viction though the holding to it meant war. Science as 
well as faith has had its martyrs. They were brave 



2 A SERIOUS QUESTION. 

enough to leave the beaten track in search of truth; 
and, when they found it, they were not to be frightened 
from their possession by the chorus of doubt and con- 
demnation with which they were assailed. That man 
will do little in the world who can be terrified by 
clamour, or who surrenders convictions because all are 
not agreed as to their truth. The manly man feels that, 
in such differences, there is a call to inquire and to 
make his own decision. The rest, though it pains one 
to say it, are no great loss. The wind that sweeps 
across the threshing-floor takes only the chaff away; 
or, if it take with it too the light, withered, heartless, 
grain, the wheat that is left clean and sound is all the 
worthier of the garner. 

Were such the only lips to ask the question we 
might pass it lightly by. But it is sometimes asked in 
despair. There is many a tragedy in these last days 
which never gets into the newspapers ; which is played 
out to the bitter end in obscurity and silence ; which no 
eye witnesses, and neither tongue nor pen relates. Let 
us glance at a few typical instances. A lad leaves a 
northern village, in which he had been born and 
brought up, for one of our large southern cities. He 
has come from a pious home where impressions had 
been made which fond parents hoped would be an abid- 
ing protection against the temptations which he went 
forth to meet. And at first it was so. He sought and 
found, in his new home, associations similar to those 
with which he had so long been familiar. He breathed 
a kindred social, intellectual, and spiritual atmosphere. 
He was found at prayer-meetings, and he rejoiced in 
young men's religious societies. Between him and 
heresy, or unbelief, there lay a great gulf of pious 
horror, which shut off all communication, and which, 
one would have imagined, effectually disposed of any 
dread of infection. 

Some years passed and then there came a change. 
He began to read. The pleasures of "the Pierian 



TRIALS OF EARLY FAITH. 3 

spring" allured him on. He wandered in new, and 
hitherto undreamt of, fields. And, as the centre of in- 
terest changed its place, there was a corresponding 
transfer of affection. The old resorts were less fre- 
quented. The limitations of old companionships be- 
came painfully apparent. They were judged of more 
by what they lacked than by what they had. 

By-and-bye another stage was reached. His reading 
had hitherto been of a colourless character so far as 
Christianity was concerned. But now in the course of 
his journeying he lighted upon a country whose 
thought and speech were diverse from all he had hith- 
erto known. The beliefs which he had till then cher- 
ished were regarded with pitying contempt, or were 
spoken of as if no sane man could have patience with 
them. All this he read with pain, but also with increas- 
ing curiosity. There must surely be some grounds, 
real or supposed, for the position which was assumed. 
What were they ? From Matthew Arnold he passed to 
the Leben Jesu of David Frederic Strauss. The dead- 
lier potion seemed at first less objectionable than the 
other. It was a relief to turn from the pretentiousness 
of Arnold to the studied fairness and the transparent 
frankness of Strauss. But it was still a thorny path- 
way. With grief and deepening sadness, one convic- 
tion after another was laid aside, till all were buried 
in a grave for which it seemed no resurrection morn 
was possible. It was a terrible awaking. The holy 
tenderness and glowing hopes of his earlier faith died 
as the day dies when the sun has sunk beneath the 
western horizon. Deep darkness settled down on past, 
present, and future. He wrote to a friend "I have 
ceased to believe in Christ, Christianity, or the Bible." 

Part of another life-drama was enacted in the same 
city, a few years earlier. It was that of a youth from 
another district and with a very different preparation 
for the struggle. No religious training had either 
biased or blessed his boyhood. Religion belonged to a 



4 A SERIOUS QUESTION. 

world with which he had nothing whatever to do, and 
with which he desired no closer connection. He had 
gone to church just as he had gone to school, from 
compulsion rather than choice, and the Sunday exer- 
cises had made still less impression than the other. He 
must have heard the texts given out ; and, though his 
thoughts were wandering far away, he must have heard 
parts at least of many a sermon ; but they were remem- 
bered quite as little as the humming of the bees in the 
fields, through which he passed to reach his home. 

A guest came one evening, who, for lack of better 
accommodation, had to share the boy's bedroom, and 
the stranger seized the opportunity to speak to him 
about that of which he had never thought — his soul. 
The result could not have been encouraging to the good 
man, and the circumstance was long remembered by the 
subject of his solicitude with anything but gratitude. 
Why people should take such dire offence at plain deal- 
ing in this of all matters — why they should be more 
indignant at the question whether they are bound for 
heaven than at the inquiry whether they think of going 
to New Zealand, is a matter which philosophers have 
yet to explain. 

Some time after his arrival in the city, conscience 
began to assert itself ; but to religion he was as indif- 
ferent as ever. A friend of the people, with whom he 
boarded, used occasionally to spend an evening with 
him and them. He was a Secularist, and belief in the 
existence of God was argued against and scoffed at. 
The youth was unable to refute the arguments ad- 
vanced, but he recoiled from the dark abyss of 
Atheism. The story is told of a lady who, having 
fallen into a trance and having been buried alive, re- 
gained consciousness as the grave-digger, who had 
afterwards unearthed the supposed corpse, was sever- 
ing a finger in order to obtain the ring which had been 
left upon it. And so the attempt to rob him of this 
last conviction seemed to arouse his long-slumbering 



MINISTERIAL DIFFICULTIES. 5 

mental and moral nature. The question was now eager- 
ly asked which had never passed those lips before — 
"What are we to believe ?" An advertisement regard- 
ing The Defender, a periodical edited by Dr. Ruther- 
ford, of Newcastle, was noticed. The magazine was 
regularly purchased and eagerly read. It met his need. 
A spirit that was willing to believe if it only could, 
was, so to speak, taken by the hand and led onward 
into brightening light. 

We may cite one case more. Two clergymen, sta- 
tioned in a University town, are walking out into the 
country, as they often do, on Monday morning. Both 
are young men and in their first pastorates, the elder 
of the two having had a couple of years' more exper- 
ience of ministerial life than his companion. There is 
a sadness, however, in this morning's conversation. 
In the confidence of a very sincere and close friendship, 
the elder is relating some of his difficulties. He pro- 
fesses himself unable any longer to accept the ordinary 
representations of the Atonement. His friend is sym- 
pathetic but astonished. To him everything is clear. 
He refers to one passage of Scripture after another, 
but the other is neither convinced nor helped. 

A few years have passed. The friends are now sep- 
arated by distance, but the younger has reason to 
remember that morning's conversation. He compre- 
hends the doubts to-day, the strength and misery of 
which were hid from him a year or two ago. The 
ground is now slipping from beneath his own feet. He 
has been increasingly attracted to a literature, the 
one grand dogma of which is the Fatherhood of God. 
It was a belief which, as he grasped it, had more of 
sentiment than of strength, but it had become to him 
practically the whole evangel. Deductions are some- 
times made slowly even by a logical mind, but once 
made they are bound on the soul with bands of iron. 
Looked at from the new standpoint, old beliefs lost 
their reasonableness, and even their credibility. His 



6 A SERIOUS QUESTION. 

faith in the central doctrine of the Scripture went as 
completely as his friend's had formerly done. 

He did his work as best he could ; but he was not at 
rest. The gospel message, as he now viewed it, had 
lost much of its urgency. There was an uneasy feeling, 
too, that he was at war with the Book which he profes- 
sed to accept wholly, and all the counsels of which he 
acknowledged it his duty to declare. Then there came to 
him a period of enforced leisure. He had time to look 
back upon the past, to weigh his work, to judge his life. 
The retrospect seemed ghastly. He asked himself what 
had been the outcome of his toil, and confessed that the 
answer, if stated truly, was — a salary. Measured by 
spiritual result it was nothing, and less than nothing. 
He was interested in the special truth on which he 
might happen to preach on the Sunday, and he believed 
that the people were also interested ; but, when Monday 
came, he and they were just where they had been be- 
fore. The studying and preaching led neither him nor 
them to anything that satisfied and saved. Theirs was 
a wandering, not a progress. Then came a time of ter- 
rible darkness, and of soul wrestling. But there was 
hope in the ordeal, for the wrestling was, like his of 
old, a wrestling with God. Light dawned, and it found 
him humbled and willing to be led. It gave him a truer 
hold on Christ, a deeper and more childlike trust in 
God's word. He still serves, and not without re- 
sult. The other lies to-day in a suicide's grave. 

These are no fancy sketches ; they are photographs. 
They remind us in how many ways and by how many 
lips this question is being asked — what are w r E to 
believe? Is there any answer? Is there anything 
which will put dark doubts to rest, and leave the heart 
with certainty and God? The old ideas regarding in- 
spiration are not, generally speaking, the ideas of to- 
day. "Verbal inspiration" is spoken of as a contradic- 
tion in terms, and rejected as a superstition and an 
absurdity. The clear and sharply-defined defence of 



CAN OLD POSITIONS BE MAINTAINED? J 

former times has given place to wavering and apology. 
We are told that the language of scripture is not to be 
too closely pressed. We are taught rather to expect 
mistakes in science and in history, till we begin to 
wonder wherein the inspiration of the Bible lies. Is 
there anything which will settle these questions — - 
which will show whether we have a Book that is not 
man's but God's, and which will prove once for all 
how its words are to be taken ? I believe there is. 



CHAPTER II. 

CAN THE QUESTION BE ANSWERED? 

We can imagine no graver position than that o± 
the man who takes his seat in the Jury-box at a 
criminal trial. He is bound by his oath and by his 
duty to his country, not only "to well and truly try," 
but also to declare his judgment. It is his to decide 
whether he shall brand a man with lasting infamy and 
crush the hearts of parents, wife, children, friends, be- 
neath a load which nothing can remove. He is asked 
to say whether a man, whose good name, liberty, and 
life, are as sacred as his own, shall be consigned to 
years of a stern and terrible prison discipline, or, it 
may be, to death at the hands of the executioner. 

And yet it sometimes happens that one piece of evi- 
dence impresses the mind of the Jury with such over- 
whelming conviction that they cannot hesitate, though 
the gravest of all issues depends upon their decision. A 
large employer of labour, for example, has been found 
dead on the way to his own home. The cause of death 
was a gun-shot wound, and it was evident that he had 
been murdered. One of his workmen, whom he had dis- 
charged after a personal altercation, is suspected, and 
placed upon his trial. The quarrel, and the consequent 



CERTAINTY SOMETIMES ATTAINED. g 

discharge are proved. Witnesses also testify that the 
prisoner threatened to be revenged; that he was seen 
in the neighbourhood at the time of the murder; and 
that a gun, which had been recently fired, was found 
in his house. So far there is ground for strong sus- 
picion. But, when it is proved that the wadding used 
in loading the gun was found in an adjacent hedge, 
was unrolled, and discovered to be part of a letter 
addressed to the prisoner, and that the letter itself, from 
which the piece had been torn, was found in his posses- 
sion, suspicion becomes certainty. Both parts are laid 
before the Jury, and in that moment every hope of the 
murderer's escape vanishes. Have we anything in the 
whole range of the Christian evidences which will 
prove the claims of Scripture as convincingly as the 
fragments of the letter prove the man's guilt ? I believe 
we have. I believe the evidence placed in our hands by 
the fulfilled predictions of Scripture does more. 

In the dedication to his book on the, Prophecies, 
'Bishop Newton refers to some conversations he had 
with Marshal Wade. The latter laughed at the alleged 
proof of Christianity from the fulfilment of prophecy, 
and all argument was set aside with the observation 
that the predictions were written after the events. The 
Bishop urged in reply that there were several proph- 
ecies wdiich were not fulfilled till recent times, and 
several more which were beyond doubt written cen- 
turies before the events happened. The Marshal was 
startled, "and said he must acknowledge that, if this 
point could be proved to satisfaction, there would be no 
argument against such plain matter of fact; it would 
certainly convince him, and, he believed, would be 
the readiest way to convince every reasonable man of 
the truth of revelation." 

That judgment is one which all must endorse. If it 
is possible to produce evidence pf the kind referred to 
by Bishop Newton, then the inspiration of the Scrip- 



10 CAN THE QUESTION BE ANSWERED? 

tures is no longer open to doubt, nor is the existence 
of Him from whom they are said to have come. As 
this is a point of such vast importance let us 

WEIGH THE ARGUMENT 

for a moment. None have better information in regard 
to our own families than we ourselves possess. We 
know the present condition and the past history of each 
member of them. We are aware of the circumstances 
which will largely influence their future, and we see 
even now how these circumstances are likely to affect 
them. Say, then, that we are asked to go forward in 
thought only ten years, and to state distinctly what the 
condition of each member of the family will be at the 
end of that time ; to say who will be alive, if any ; who, 
if any, dead ; in what place each will then be residing ; 
who will be in prosperous circumstances, who in cir- 
cumstances the reverse. How should we meet the 
demand? Should we entertain the questions seriously* 
even for a moment ? Much as we do know, none but a 
madman or a fool could suppose us capable of resolv- 
ing such points as these. 

Again : we all have some acquaintance with the city, 
town, or place, in which we dwell. We can say 
whether there is promise of increased population and 
prosperity, or whether a decrease of both is threatened. 
But, thoroughly as we know the place and its prospects, 
will any one of us venture to leave the region of opin- 
ion and surmise, and speak minutely and positively 
of what its condition will be a hundred years hence? 
Or, to take another illustration: there are men now 
guiding the destinies of Europe who have studied pol- 
itics for half a century. Many of them have had long 
and accurate knowledge of the tendencies and re- 
sources of the various countries, and of the dangers 
which threaten them from without and from within. 



THE FUTURE HID FROM HUMAN VIEW. II 

Ask the man, who has the keenest vision of them all, 
what will be the condition at the close of the next half 
century of India, or Germany, or France, or Great 
Britain. Ask whether Switzerland, for example, will 
then retain her independence, or have been seized by 
one of her bigger neighbors, and in the latter event, by 
which. Suppose these questions gravely put, and 
gravely entertained, will not the answer be, that the 
things which we wish to know lie far beyond the range 
of the keenest sight possessed by man — that the wisest, 
though he may shrewdly conjecture, cannot write a 
single page, nor pen a single line, of the story of the 
future ? 

It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to emphasize this 
by further illustrations. But literature abounds with 
proofs of how completely, notwithstanding all we say 
about insight and foresight, the future is hid from us. 
Malte Brun in his description of Prussia, says that 
"from its proximity to Russia it must be in many re- 
spects a secondary power" little anticipating the polit- 
ical developments of present times. "It is curious," 
Henry Greville writes under date March 20, 1848, 
"that Lord Hardinge, who arrived here on Thursday, 
passed two hours at Vienna, and saw Metternich, who 
spoke of passing events without the slightest apprehen- 
sion, and said that it was possible there might be some 
disturbances in different parts of the Empire, but that 
they would be put down without any difficulty, and 
that he had no intention of making any concessions 
at this time. Four days afterwards lie was obliged to 
fly from Vienna, and his house was sacked and 
burnt."* 

Instances of similar blindness might easily be mul- 
tiplied, but I mention three only which have a common 
bearing on one of the greatest events of modern times 

* Leaves from the Dairy of Henry Greville, Vol. I., p. 243. 



12 CAN THE QUESTION BE ANSWERED? 

— the regeneration of Italy. Macaulay concludes his, 
essay on Machiavelli with the words: "In the church 
of Santa Croce a monument was erected to his memory 
. . . . which will be approached with still deeper 
homage when the object to which his public life zvas 
devoted shall be attained, zvhen the foreign yoke shall 
be broken, when a second Procida shall avenge the 
wrongs of Naples, when a happier Rienzi shall restore 
the good estate of Rome, when the streets of Florence 
and Bologna shall again resound with their ancient 
war-cry, 'Popolo; popolo; mnoiano i tiranni! " This 
was written in 1827. Who knew that in the days of 
men then living all these aspirations would be fulfilled 
— that every tyrant should have fled, and that the land 
be no more darkened with the shadow of an 
oppressor? 

In 185 1, Mr. Gladstone published his letter regard- 
ing the condition of Naples. Between twenty and 
thirty thousand political prisoners lay crowded to- 
gether in the fortresses and jails. No man raised his 
voice on behalf of liberty, or even fell under suspicion 
of holding liberal opinions, but was sent into exile or 
cast into a dungeon. Mr. Gladstone published his 
indignant appeal to the public opinion of Europe, 
thinking, perhaps, that the Neapolitan Government 
might be shamed into humanity, but seeing no other 
hope for a cruelly oppressed people. Who could have 
foreseen that before another ten years had passed 
that land should be free — free as it had not been for 
ages ; and that a fugitive from his beloved Italy, then 
wandering on the far-distant shores of America, was 
the man through whom the deliverance should come? 
Who was then able, with his hand upon these facts, to 
warn the tyrant, or to console the down-trodden ? 

The last and not least startling instance, which I cite, 
of man's ignorance of the future, is found in a letter 
written on the eve of Italy's complete deliverance As 



THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS. 1 3 

late as the Spring of 1866 George A. Sala wrote as 
follows regarding Venice : "When is the day of her 
deliverance to come, and when are the tears which, 
with but twelve months' intermission, have flowed for 
half a century, to be dried ? She waits and waits, and 
the Italians wait too, clenching their hands, and grind- 
ing their teeth. ... It is impossible to cross the 
frontier, or to be half-an-hour in the Austro- Venetian 
territory, without becoming aware that the Austrian 
'Autograph' — as Mr. Thackeray called the double- 
headed eagle — has got a very tight grip of the country. 
. . As he is a very powerful eagle, strong on the 
wing and adamantine in the talons, the contingency of 
his giving up his Venetian quarry is, to say the least, 
remote. It is not impossible."* To these words he 
has appended the following note: "This was written 
in the Spring. In the Summer came Sadowa, and the 
Austrians gave up Venice." 

"It is," as a veteran statesman once said, "the unex- 
pected that happens." The anticipations of the most 
far-seeing, and the precautions of the wisest are 
mocked again and again by the bitter irony of events. 
We might as soon think to pluck the stars from heaven 
as to wrest its secrets from the future. The king, 
when he bade the advancing waves retire, was not 
more powerless than we, when we command the ap- 
proaching days to appear and tell what things they 
bring. We cannot foresee even dimly the events of to- 
morrow, or of the next hour. We stand before a wall 
of impenetrable darkness. We have hopes and fears, 
but no certainties. Thoughts rise up within our 
bosom, but from the future there comes neither voice 
nor sign. If, then, this feat, which we rightly declare 
is impossible for man to perform, has been achieved — 
if the future has been read, and, not only years, but 

* Rome and Venice, pp. 33-36. 



14 CAN THE QUESTION BE ANSWERED? 

centuries have yielded up their secrets — if we produce 
a book in which predictions, so numerous, and varied, 
and minute as to preclude all possibility of chance, 
were 

RECORDED CENTURIES BEFORE 

the events occurred in which they were startlingly ful- 
filled — will it be any longer possible to doubt that God 
is, and that this is His word to us ? If evidence of this 
kind can really be produced, doubt will be an impossi- 
bility. And whether our evidence be of this kind the 
reader will now be able to judge. 



CHAPTER III. 

PREDICTIONS REGARDING TYRE AND SIDON. 

To show the nature of the evidence we have to offer 
we take the case of 

TYRE. 

Its doom is predicted in the twenty-sixth chapter of 
Ezekiel. A graphic picture is drawn of its siege and 
capture by Nebuchadnezzar (verses 7-11). The pow- 
erful fleet of Tyre swept the sea, and prevented the 
complete investment of the city; but, after a siege of 
thirteen years, it was at last taken by the Chaldean 
army. With this part of the prophecy, however, we 
do not concern ourselves. The genuineness of the 
book of Ezekiel will not be questioned, but still it 
would be difficult to prove that the prophecy was 
uttered before this event took place. 

More, however, was predicted. After describing the 
vengeance which the king of Babylon will inflict, the 
prophecy proceeds : "And they shall lay thy stones, 
and thy timber, and thy dust in the midst of the 
waters" (verse 12). Let the change of person be 
noted. Having spoken of what Nebuchadnezzar will 
do, it is added, "And they shall," etc., as if others were 
to be joined with him in the work of destruction. 
Light is thrown upon this distinction in the third and 
fourth verses. God will cause many nations to come 
up against Tyre, "as the sea causes his waves to come 



1 6 TYRE AND SIDON. 

up" (verse 3). Shock will succeed to shock, till she is 
utterly desolate; "and they shall destroy the walls of 
Tyrus, and break do\vn her towers ; I will also scrape 
her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock" 
(verse 4). 

Previous to the fall of their ancient city, the Tyrians 
had removed the bulk of their treasure to an island in 
their possession, half a mile from the shore. Taught 
now by bitter experience, they resolved to trust them- 
selves no more within walls, which had not round them 
the defence of a watery girdle. Tyre was mistress of 
the sea, and could defend herself there. The old city 
was therefore deserted, and no attempt was made to 
rebuild it after the Babylonian army had retired. So 
far the prophecy had been fulfilled, but only so fan 
Tyre was overthrown and spoiled; the noise of her 
songs had ceased ; the sound of her harps was no more 
heard (verse 13) ; the great and joyous city was abased 
and desolate. But the ruins still stood. The words 
which declared that the stones and the timber should 
be cast into the sea, and the very dust be scraped from 
the city's site, had not been fulfilled; and it seemed 
most improbable that they ever would.be. What could 
the words mean? Nebuchadnezzar had taken a full 
vengeance, but he had never thought of this. Even in 
his case, furious though he might be at the long-con- 
tinued resistance, it would have been the very frenzy 
of revenge. Who then would be found to wreak such 
unheard-of vengeance upon the unoffending ruins? 

More than two hundred and forty years rolled on, 
and there was no answer. For two and a half cen- 
turies those words of Scripture seemed a vain menace. 
Then the fame of Alexander's swift and all-conquer- 
ing career sent a thrill of alarm through the East. 
The Tyrian ambassadors, who hastened to meet him, 
were favourably received. It seemed as if this storm- 
cloud were about to pass harmlessly over them. But 
suddenly the conqueror expressed a desire to worship 



LIMITS OF THE INQUIRY. 17 

within their city. They knew only too well what that 
request meant. Alexander would not enter alone; 
and, once there, those who came as worshippers would 
remain as masters. The Tyrians resolved to abide the 
issue of war, 'rather than tamely hand over their city 
to the Macedonian king. Alexander's army marched 
to the sea-shore, and there, with half a mile of blue 
waters between them and it, stood the city they had 
come to attack. How could it be taken? Alexander's 
plan was speedily formed. He determined to construct 
a solid causeway through the sea, over which his forces 
might advance to the assault. And now this word, 
which had waited so long, was at last 

LITERALLY FULFILLED. 

The walls, and the towers, and the ruined houses, and 
palaces, and temples, of the ancient city were pulled 
down, and the stones and the timber of Tyre were laid 
"in the midst of the water." Her mounds of ruins 
were cleared away; and so great was the demand for 
material in this vast undertaking, that the very dust 
seems to have been scraped from the site and laid in 
the sea. Though centuries had passed after the word 
was spoken, and had seen no fulfilment, it was not for- 
gotten; and the event declared that it was His word 
whose judgments, though they may linger long, come 
surely, and fall at last with resistless might. 

I have dwelt upon this instance simply as an ex- 
ample of the kind of evidence we are able to bring 
forward. Indubitable though the prophecy is, I press 
for no conclusion from its fulfilment. It is of the 
utmost importance, in this inquiry, to place it beyond 
the possibility of doubt that we are dealing with ver- 
itable prophecies, and that the prediction is separated 
from the event by such an interval as must exclude the 
possibility of human foresight. It could be proved sat- 



1 8 TYRE AND SIDON. 

isfactorily to most minds that the book of Ezekiel was 
in existence long before the time of Alexander; but 
still doubt might creep in. The suggestion might be 
made that this particular prediction was added, or 
amended, by a later hand. 

We shall therefore limit the present inquiry to those 
prophecies, regarding whose pre-existence to the 
events of w 7 hich they speak, there can, in no mind, be 
any doubt whatever. I enter into no argument as to 
the age of the Old Testament Scriptures. I ask no 
admission to be made in regard to the antiquity of any 
one of the prophetical books. We shall come down to 
a time later than any that has ever been named for 
their origin, and our argument shall stand or fall by 
the prophecies which have been fulfilled since then. 
Everyone is fully satisfied that all the Books of the Old 
Testament were in existence before the time of our 
Lord. It is also known, that since that time, the Old 
Testament has been in 

A TWOFOLD CUSTODY. 

It has been in the hands of both Jews and Christians, 
between whom there could be no collusion. There is 
therefore absolute certainty that the prophecies are as 
old as the coming of Christ, and that, as they existed 
then, we possess them now. If then we take only such 
predictions as have been fulfilled at, or since, the 
beginning of the Christian era, every doubt will be 
removed and every cavil prevented in regard to the 
interval between the prophecy and the event; and 
within these limits we shall confine our present argu- 
ment. 

We have spoken of Tyre. There is one part of the 
prophecy which falls within the limits we have now 
set ourselves. We read (Ezek. xxvi. 13, 14) : "I will 
cause the noise of thy songs to cease; and the sound 



DOOM OF SIDON. 1 9 

of thy harps shall be no more heard . . . Thou 
shalt be 

BUILT NO MORE." 

This sentence of the divine judgment stands as a chal- 
lenge to all time. It has been unanswered, save by the 
silence of generations. It is unanswered still. Palse- 
Tyrus, the continental Tyre, which was captured by 
Nebuchadnezzar, and the ruins of which were cleared 
away by Alexander, has 

NEVER BEEN REBUILT. 

The site remains to-day without even a mound to mark 
it, and has to be determined solely by the notices in 
ancient writers which give its distance from the island 
Tyre. 

Let us now turn for a moment from Tyre to 

SIDON. 

a neighboring and still more ancient city, which had 
fallen into comparative decay when Tyre was in its 
splendour. Sidon still remains, possessing even now 
about ten thousand inhabitants. It has its walls, its 
castle, and its mounds of ruins, which testify to the 
city's ancient extent and greatness. It is still, in that 
wretched country, a place of importance and strength. 
But inEzekiel (xxviii. 20-23) there is a prediction 
regarding Sidon also: "And the word of the Lord 
came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face toward 
Zidon, and prophesy against it, and say, Thus saith 
the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Zidon; 
and I will be glorified in the midst of thee: and they 
shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have 
executed judgments in her, and shall be sanctified in 
her. For I will send into her pestilence, and blood 

IN HER STREETS; AND THE WOUNDED SHALL FALL IN 



\ 



20 TYRE AND SIDON. 

THE MIDST OF HER WITH THE SWORD UPON HER ON 

every side/' Observe the peculiar judgment of Sidon. 
Blood will be sent into her streets ; her wounded -shall 
fall in the midst of her; the sword is to be upon her 
on every side. No doom of extinction is pronounced 
against her. She is to be spared, but she is to suffer. 
One or two facts from her long history will show how 
the words have been fulfilled. Under the Persian 
dominion, when Tyre was deserted, Sidon was still 
great and populous. It rebelled under Artaxerxes 
Ochus, and, after a successful resistance, was betrayed 
to the enemy. When all hope of saving their city was 
gone, 40,000 citizens chose to die rather than submit 
to Persian vengeance. They shut themselves up with 
their wives and children, set fire to their dwellings, 
and perished amid the flames. The ashes of the city 
were sold for an immense sum. It was soon rebuilt 
by the citizens who had been absent at the time of the 
siege; but the doom of suffering still rested on it. 
During the Crusades it was taken several times and 
sacked. It was finally retaken from the Crusaders by 
Bibars, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, in 1290. But, in 
every commotion which has troubled that unhappy 
land, Sidon has had her share. It has been the scene 
of struggles between the Druses and the Turks, and, 
again, between the Turks and the French. So late as 
1840, when Ibrahim Pasha was driven out of Syria, it 
was bombarded by the combined fleets of England, 
Austria, and Turkey, and captured b~ Admiral Napier, 
when again blood was sent into her streets, and her 
wounded fell in the midst of her. Suppose now that 
the names of Tyre and Sidon had 

CHANGED PLACES 

■ — that it had been said Tyre was to live, and Sidon to 
be utterly destroyed and never to be rebuilt, how com- 
plete would have been the refutation of Ezekiel's claim 



FATE OF SIDON. 21 

to speak the word of the Lord ! But how is it that this 
interchange of names did not take place? How is it 
that the city which has never been rebuilt is that of 
which this very thing and no other is prophesied, and 
that the city which has continued to exist is that which 
by the prophet is beheld as existing? And, even 
though this could be explained, a harder question re- 
mains. Sidon, like many another ancient city, might 
have dwindled into insignificance, so" that, in its misery 
and defencelessness, it should have offered no resis- 
tance to any, and have tempted no one's cupidity. 
How has it happened that these words of the prophet 
paint her as she has been, and as she is to-day — a 
place of strength which age after age has been fought 
for, and has been passed on, wet with blood, from one 
possessor to another? There is one explanation in 
which alone, far though it takes us, the mind will rest 
with perfect satisfaction. It is, that He speaks here 
whose thought grasps the ages, and before whom the 
future has no veil, and who, in these proofs of His 
faithfulness, writes on man's heart the assurance, 
"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words 
shall not pass away." 



CHAPTER IV. 



EGYPT. 



Were we asked to say what country it is which is 
celebrated alike for the highest antiquity as for early, and 
unequaled, and long-continued, eminence in science, in 
the arts, in an enlightened and refined civilization, in 
luxury and magnificence — which has continued through 
all history a realm of wonder, and which still plays a 
part in the commerce and in the politics of the world — 
there could be but one answer. It is the land of Egypt. 
Like its own monuments, which, in their colossal great- 
ness, bid a calm but proud defiance to the ravages of 
time, this land lives on. It is still the home of the de- 
scendants of its ancient masters. It still possesses the 
blessing of that rare fertility which proved the founda- 
tion of its past splendour. And if it does, like its mon- 
uments, show that in the struggle with time it has not 
come off unscathed, if the hand of decay has left its im- 
press, it may find some satisfaction in the thought that 
to its long and proud career there is no parallel in the 
whole world beside. 

But Egypt has also another claim to attention. In no 
land have the prophecies of the Old Testament received 
a more striking fulfilment than in this. In the misery 
of its people and the ruin of its cities it bears over- 
whelming, though involuntary, testimony to the claims 



PREDICTION REGARDING ITS ANCIENT CAPITAL. 23 

of Scripture. To part of this testimony we shall now 
listen. 

THEBES, 

the ancient capital of Egypt, was called by the Greeks 
Diospolis (the city of Jupiter). This appears to have 
been a literal translation of the Egyptian name No- 
Amon which appears in Nahum iii. 8. The latter name 
signifies the portion, or abode, of the god Amon, in 
whom the Greeks believed they recognized their own 
Zeus, the Roman Jupiter. The first part of this name, 
No, is that by which the city is generally designated 
in the Scriptures. The praises of the city with its 
hundred gates were sung of old by Homer; and the 
graphic picture which the poet presents of its populous- 
ness is outshone by the sober statement of Tacitus that 
it could send into the field an army of seven hundred 
thousand men. Diodorus Siculus, who visited Egypt 
about 50 b. a, and who saw Thebes only in its ruin, 
cannot restrain his admiration. The sun had never 
seen, he says, so magnificent a city. "Never was there 
a city," he exclaims, "which received so many offer- 
ings in silver, gold, and ivory, colossal statues, and 
obelisks, each cut from a single stone. Four principal 
temples are especially admired there, the most ancient 
of which was surpassingly grand and sumptuous. It 
was thirteen stadia (one mile and three-quarters) in 
circumference, and surrounded by walls twenty-four 
feet in thickness, and forty-five cubits high. The rich- 
ness and workmanship of its ornaments were corres- 
pondent to the majesty of the building, which many 
kings contributed to embellish." 

The testimony of Diodorus is amply confirmed by 
the remains. The stupendous ruins of Luxor and 
Carnac, parts of the ancient No which are still inhab- 
ited, excite to-day the same feelings of admiration and 
amazement. The great temple of Carnac "is the 
largest and most splendid ruin of which, perhaps, either 



24 £GYPt. 

ancient or modern times can boast."* "All here is sub- 
lime, all majestic. With pain one tears oneself from 
Thebes. Her monuments fix the traveller's eyes, and 
fill his mind with vast ideas. Beholding colossal 
figures and stately obelisks which seem to surpass 
human powers, he says, 'Man has done this/ and feels 
himself and his species ennobled. "t 

Of the Great Hall Miss Amelia B. Edwards writes : 
"It is a place that has been much written about and 
often painted ; but of which no writing and no art can 
convey more than a dwarfed and pallid impression. 
To describe it, in the sense of building up a recog- 
nizable image by means of words, is impossible. 1 The 
scale is too vast ; the effect too tremendous ; the sense 
of one's own dumbness, and littleness, and incapacity, 
too complete and crushing. It is a place that strikes 
you into silence ; that empties you, as it were, not only 
of words, but of ideas. Nor is this a first effect only. 
Later in the year, when we came back and moored 
close by, and spent long days among the ruins, I found 
I never had a word to say in the Great Hall, . , . 
I could only look and be silent. 

"Yet to look is something if one can but succeed in 
remembering. ... I stand once more among 
those mighty columns, which radiate into avenues from. 
whatever point one takes them. I see them swathed in 
coiled shadows and broad bands of light. I see them 
sculptured and painted with shapes of Gods and Kings, 
with blazonings of royal names, with sacrificial altars, 
and forms of sacred beasts and emblems of wisdom 
and truth. The shafts of these columns are enormous. 
I stand at the foot of one — or of what seems to be the 
foot ; for the original pavement seems to be buried 
seven feet below. Six men standing with outstretched 
arms, finger tip to finger tip, could barely span it 
round. It casts a shadow twelve feet in breadth — such 

* Wilkinson. f Savary. 



GLORIES OF THEBES. 25 

a shadow as might be cast by a tower. The capital 
that juts out so high above my head looks as if it 
might have been put there to support the heavens. It 
is carved in the semblance of a full-blown lotus, and 
glows with undying colours — colours that are still fresh, 
though laid on by hands that have been dust these 
three thousand years and more."* 

The impression produced by another of these struc- 
tures is equally overpowering. "The temple of Luxor 
presents to the traveller at once one of the most 
splendid groups of Egyptian grandeur. The extensive 
propylaeori, with two obelisks and colossal statues in 
front, the thick groups of enormous columns, the 
variety of apartments and the sanctuary it contains, 
the beautiful ornaments which adorn every part of the 
walls and columns described by Mr. Hamilton, cause 
in the astonished traveller an oblivion of all he has seen 
before. If his attention be attracted to the north side 
of Thebes by the towering remains that project a great 
height above the wood of palm trees, he will gradually 
enter that forest-like assemblage of ruins and temples, 
columns, obelisks, colossi, sphinxes, portals, and an 
endless number of other astonishing objects that will 
convince him at once of the impossibility of a descrip- 
tion. ... It is absolutely impossible to imagine 
the scene displayed without seeing it. The most sub- 
lime ideas that can be formed from the most magnifi- 
cent specimens of our present architecture would give 
a very incorrect picture of these ruins ; for such is the 
difference, not only in magnitude, but in form, propor- 
tion, and construction, that even the pencil can convey 
but a faint idea of the whole. It appeared to me like 
entering a city of giants, who, after a long conflict, 
were all destroyed, leaving the ruins of their various 
temples as the only proofs of their former existence. "t 
The tombs of the kings, excavated in the rugged, barren 

* A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, pp. 219-220. t Belzoni. 



26 EGYPT. 

mountains which skirt the city on the west have added 
to the astonishment with which travellers have sur- 
veyed this crowning marvel of the wonders of Egypt. 
"Nothing that has ever been said about them had 
prepared me for their extraordinary grandeur. You 
enter a sculptured portal in the face of these wild cliffs, 
and find yourself in a long and lofty gallery, opening 
or narrowing, as the case may be, into successive halls 
and chambers, all of which are covered with white 
stucco, and this white stucco brilliant with colors fresh 
as they were thousands of years ago. . . . They 
are, in fact, gorgeous palaces."* 

But on these ruins another truth is written besides 
that of man's greatness, or the vanity of earthly glory. 
"Such vast and surprising remains are still to be seen," 
says Pococke, "of such magnificence and solidity, as 
may convince any one who beholds them that, without 
some extraordinary accident, they must have lasted 
for ever ; which seems to have been the intention of the 
founders of them." Of this "extraordinary accident" 
the Scriptures have something quite as extraordinary 
to say. 

In Ezekiel xxx. 14-16 there is mention made of No 
in each of the three verses. The story of her then 
future is told in three brief sentences : "I will execute 
judgments in No" — "I will cut off the multitude of 
No" — "And No shall be broken up." "I will execute 
judgments in No," seems to point to something more 
than an ordinary tale of siege and capture. Does the 
after-fate of Thebes stand out, then, as singular on the 
page of Egyptian history? The judgments were so 
marked and awful that historians have, unbidden, sup- 
plied the answer. Thebes sank beneath two of the 
most terrible blows ever dealt by the hand of man, and 
both fell after the prediction was uttered. The proph- 
ecies of Ezekiel were written in the time of Nebuchad- 

* Dean Stanley. 



THE JUDGMENT OF THEBES. 2>] 

nezzar : and, thirteen years after his dynasty was over- 
thrown and Chaldea had passed into the hands of the 
Persians, Cambyses, during his invasion of Egypt 
(about 525 B.C.), captured Thebes, and poured out 
upon its devoted head the wrath of his insane ferocity. 
Its majestic temples were consumed with fire; and the 
power of the victorious host was bent to overthrow, or 
mar, its colossal statues. Although the city sprang up 
again, it never regained its ancient splendour. The 
hand of an irreversible judgment was laid also upon 
the sources of its wealth and greatness. It ceased to be 
Egypt's chief city. The capital was removed in turn 
to Memphis, Sais, and Alexandria. After the Greek 
conquest, the streams of commerce by which it had 
been fed were turned in other directions. "Commer- 
cial wealth, on the accession of the Ptolemies, began to 
flow in other channels. Coptos and Appollinopolis 
succeeded to the lucrative trade of Arabia, and 
Ethiopia no longer contributed to the revenues of 
Thebes."* Yet, notwithstanding its long decline, when 
the second stroke fell, in the beginning of the first cen- 
tury preceding the Christian era, Thebes was even 
then one of the wealthiest cities in the land. The blow 
was dealt by one of Egypt's own princes, Ptolemy 
Lathyrus, the grandfather of Cleopatra, about the year 
89 B.C. ; and the greatness that still remained to the 
ancient city can be measured by the fact that for three 
Years it defied all the efiforts of the besiegers. But 
the victor exacted a terrible vengeance. It was almost 
entirely levelled to the ground, and the words of the 
fourteenth and fifteenth verses fouhd a complete fulfil- 
ment. God had executed judgments in No ; its multi- 
tude was cut oflf, and has never returned. 

It may seem that, in dealing with this prophecy, we 
are overstepping the limits we set ourselves when we 
promised to bring forward only such prophecies as 

* Wilkinson. 



28 EGYPT. 

have been fulfilled since the beginning of the Christian 
era; but, if in this instance we had had to go beyond 
our self-imposed boundary, the case is so clear and 
striking that it would have been difficult to have passed 
it over in silence. The third part of the prophecy, 
however, portraying as it does the after and permanent 
condition of the great city, falls most assuredly within 
our limits. "And No," the prophet continues, "shall 
be broken up." Too much stress, it might be thought, 
should not be laid upon the words ; but the student of 
the fulfilled prophecies of Scripture learns that their 
words need no screen nor apology — that the very heart 
of the wonder lies in their complete and minute accom- 
plishment. The prediction finds its interpretation in 
the event. No was literally broken up. Strabo visited 
the ruins about 25 B.C., and found the city, which only 
sixty years before still retained its majestic unity, 
divided into many separate villages. As Strabo found 
it, it has remained ever since ; and the ruins are to-day 
portioned out between nine hamlets. Thebes was to 
endure, but only in fragments. How came the prophet 
to pen the words : "And No shall be broken up ?" In 
summing up the destiny of Egypt's great and ancient 
capital, how did it happen that the finger was laid upon 
the very condition which it has maintained for twenty 
centuries ? 

The Old Testament contains so many distinct predic- 
tions regarding Egypt generally, that we may say they 
have written its history, and described the present posi- 
tion of the country and the condition of its people. 
Jeremiah foretells that, with the overthrow of Pharaoh 
by Nebuchadnezzar, a decline will set in which will 
deepen evermore, and for which no remedy shall be 
found. "Go up into Gilead," he says, "and take balm, 
O virgin daughter of Egypt: in vain dost thou use 
manv medicines ; there is no healing for thee" (Jer. 
xlvi. 11). We shall confine ourselves, however, to the 
prophecies concerning Egypt contained in the twenty- 



ITS DECLINE PREDICTED. 29 

ninth and thirtieth chapters of Ezekiel, and the nine- 
teenth chapter of Isaiah. In Ezekiel xxix. the ap- 
proaching conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar is 
foretold. The Egyptians are to be led away into cap- 
tivity and the land is to be desolate for forty years. 
At the end of that time they are to return, but their 
greatness is not to be restored. In accordance with the 
words we have quoted from Jeremiah, Egypt will in 
vain seek healing for her wound. This 

DOOM OF DECLINE 

is repeated again and again. It shall not "any more 
lift itself up above the nations; and I will diminish 
them that they shall no more rule over the nations" 
(Ezek. 'xxix. 15); "her foundations shall be broken 
down. . . . The pride of her power shall come 
down" (xxx. 4, 6). This great country is, therefore, 
depicted as undergoing a gradual and total decay. 

To be convinced that this prediction was not due to 
human foresight, we have only to remember what 
Egypt was at the beginning of the Christian era, and 
for ages after. Even then she seemed worthy of the 
fame which fixed the World's gaze upon her in admir- 
ing reverence. She had been the mother of science 
and letters and art. At the fire which burned upon her 
hearth, the nations had kindled the lamp of knowledge, 
which has burned on age after age, and which now 
flames so brightly. Her greatness was unique. It was 
more true and human than that of any other ancient 
land save Greece ; and she had the unity, and repose, 
and calm majesty, which Greece lacked. She stood 
alone among the nations, great, wise, self-respecting; 
around her the choicest treasures of earth ; her land 
filled with imperishable monuments of might and skill, 
and genius ; her people, in their order and enlighten- 
ment and civilization, a marvel to all time. The foun- 
dation of her greatness was not her military power, but 



30 EGYPT. 

the exhaustless wealth of her soil. That still remained ; 
and, though she had felt the touch of decay, there was 
nothing in the time of our Lord to indicate that Egypt's 
day was past. It was within the range, not only of 
possibility, but of probability that she might yet 
again be mistress of her destiny, and that her old 
splendour might return. Her fertility won for her 
even then the title of "the granary of the world." 
Augustus, after the defeat of Antony, found so 
great wealth in Egypt that with it he paid all 
the arrears due to his army, and the debts 
which he had incurred to meet the expenses of 
the war. "It is said, too, that after all the spoliations 
the wealth and resources of Egypt appeared to him so 
formidable, that he was afraid to intrust that province 
to the charge of any man of rank or interest, lest he 
should raise up a rival to himself. He therefore com- 
mitted the government of the country to Cornelius 
Gallus, a citizen of the equestrian order, and a person 
of very low extraction ; he would not allow the city of 
Alexandria to possess any municipal council ; and he 
declared all Egyptians incapable of being admitted into 
the Senate at Rome."* "Till the moment of the 
Arabian conquest," says Dr. Vincent, "Alexandria con- 
tinued the second city in the (Roman) empire in rank, 
and the first, perhaps, in wealth, commerce, and pros- 
perity." 

Even in the seventh century of our era Egypt was 
still so powerful that the Mohammedan hosts, 
though flushed with victory, hesitated to attack it. 
The event showed that their caution was not un- 
called for. Babylon of Egypt, on the ruins of which 
the town of Fostat was built, detained them seven 
months. The siege of Alexandria lasted fourteen 
months, and the Arabs lost before it twenty-three 
thousand men ; and, after all, its capture was due to 

* Dr. Arnold, 



THE DOOM OF DECLINE. 3 1 

internal treachery, and not to the superior power of 
the assailants. The sight of its magnificence and 
wealth filled the children of the East with amaze- 
ment. " T have taken/ said Amrou to the caliph, 
'the great city of the West. It is impossible for me 
to enumerate the variety of its riches and beauty, 
and I content myself with observing that it con- 
tains 4,000 palaces, 400 theatres or places of amuse- 
ment, 12,000 shops for the sale of vegetable food, 
and 40,000 tributary Jews/ "* The destruction of 
the royal library, which was distributed among the 
baths of the city, and which supplied them with fuel 
for six months, has been regarded as one of the 
greatest of the world's calamities. Alexandria did 
not stand alone. Its condition was an indication of 
the riches and strength of the whole country. It 
would have been impossible for the Arabs to have 
conquered Egypt, or to have afterwards held it, had 
not the people, groaning under the oppression of 
their Greek masters, thrown themselves into the 
arms of the invaders. 

So late, then, as the year 638, as far as human 
foresight is concerned, the fulfilment of this predic- 
tion could not have been foretold as even probable. 
What have the after-history of Egypt and its present 
condition to say regarding it? Have the last twelve 
and a half centuries proved or disproved the Scrip- 
ture ? Here is the answer : — 

There has been, as was predicted, a constant de- 
cline. From the time of the Babylonian invasion 
there was no revival of Egypt's greatness and pre- 
eminence among the nations. Many medicines were 
tried, but she was not healed. In the Egypt of the 
Pharaohs, of the Persian dominion, of the Ptolemies, 
of the Roman Empire, of the Mohammedans, we 
have a gradual but continuous descent. After the 

* Gibbon. 



$2 EGYPT. 

Arab conquest the degeneration proceeded with 
rapid strides, till Egypt has become what it is to- 
day. Its science, and learning, and art, no less than 
its magnificence, and power, and prestige, have 
Wholly perished. Along that pathway of the past 
everything that made the Egyptians what they were 
has been wholly lost. 

It was believed by many that a change for the 
better had set in under the present dynasty. The 
improvement was certainly not to be seen in hope- 
lessly embarrassed finances, or in the character of 
the reigning class ; and, what had a still more im- 
portant bearing on the question of the prospects of 
Egypt, no improvement could be discerned in the 
mass of the people. A letter which appeared in 
The Times in the beginning of 1875, and gave to 
capitalists and others a needed note of warn- 
ing, presented a view of the state of the country 
which no one who knew Egypt could dispute: — "No 
one, however, can say that, amid the material progress 
which has been made, any perceptible change in the 
feelings or condition of the great bulk of the people has 
been effected ; and here, unfortunately, lies the element 
of instability in the new order of things. A little more 
Manchester calico is worn by the Arab population, a 
few more of the upper class of Arabs wear black cloth 
and French kid boots, and there is less repugnance 
among the pashas to champagne or claret ; but in the 
essential features and characteristic habits of the people 
there is no- real change or improvement whatever. . . 
Such a thorough change in the external features of 
any nation in so short a time has probably never been 
witnessed. But it is much more remarkable, it is 
almost pathetic, when it is remembered that the great 
mass of the people are utterly rude and unlettered, and 
only very slightly removed from barbarism. It is here, 
indeed, that the unstable foundation ; upon which the 
Khedive has built his splendid superstructure discovers 



ITS PRESERVATION. 33 

its weakness."* Every friend of humanity would re- 
joice had the degradation of Egypt reached its limit, 
and had the dawn of a brighter day risen upon it. But 
the advance was not the offspring of awakening life 
and prosperity among the people ; it was solely due to 
the late Khedive's aspirations, and strenuous, but in- 
dividual, efforts. The improvement did not penetrate 
to the people, and the only result for them was the 
increased pressure of their burdens. 

The British occupation, which began in 1882, has 
undoubtedly brought a large measure of relief. The 
following, originally contributed to The New York 
Nation by its correspondent, Mr. Woodruff, in 1892, 
is a testimony of which Great Britain may well be 
proud: "The reforms which England has wrought in 
Egypt during the past nine years are simply astound- 
ing. A looted treasury, a disorganised and almost 
hopelessly corrupt administration, a rebellious and 
cowardly army, and a people crushed with unbearable 
taxation, have in this short space of time, and in the 
face of Oriental apathy and French obstruction, been 
metamorphosed into order, plenty, and content."t But 
while all this is true, it would be a mistake to conclude 
that Egypt's trouble was ended and that those predic- 
tions ceased to find fulfilment. These reforms are in 
no sense of native growth. They are imposed by 
external pressure, and when the pressure is with- 
drawn they will disappear. And even now the burdens 
are huge. In 1903 the funded debt of Egypt amounted 
to 103 millions sterling. The annual interest and other 
charges on that sum, with the payment of a standing 
army, and of an extensive civil administration, have all 
to be met by taxation imposed upon a people struggling 
with poverty. It is equally true also that the British 
occupation has produced no regeneration of the people 
nor the faintest promise of returning greatness. 

* James Shaw. 
f W. Fraser Rae, Egypt To-day , pp. 131-132. 



34 EGYPT. 

This second point, then, in the prophetic picture of 
Egypt has been strikingly fulfilled. There has been 
"no healing" for Egypt. "The pride of her power" has 
"come down." She has been diminished and has no 
more ruled over the nations. We now turn to a third 
feature. Though there is to be decline, the Scripture 
assures us there will be 

NO EXTINCTION 

either of the people or of the kingdom. "They," we 
read, "shall be there (that is, in their own land) a base 
kingdom" (Ezek. xxix. 14). Had this deepening de- 
cay been foreseen by the wise, had it been accepted as 
certain that Egypt should pass down step by step from 
prosperity and greatness, the prediction would inevit- 
ably have been ventured that at some point of that 
career of degradation her existence as a nation, or at 
least as a separate dominion, should cease. This must 
have seemed the surest of all possible deductions. The 
national extinction of the Egyptians is an event which 
in itself would have occasioned little surprise. On the 
contrary, it was to be expected that Egypt should 
share the general fate of Eastern greatness. The 
nations, the waves on this great unresting sea of human 
life, have their rise and fall. They come towering on 
in swelling strength and pride toward that strong 
barrier which a Divine hand has set ; but they are only 
hurrying on to the moment when, brought utterly low 
and broken, they will be lost in the great ocean whence 
they sprang. A people cannot continue at the summit 
of power for ever. And when their supremacy is over- 
thrown, they are gradually merged in the conquering 
race, and lost among them ; and their territory, becom- 
ing a province of a wider empire, loses, so far as 
nature will permit, its special character, and its old 
traditional boundaries. 

It seemed highly improbable, therefore, altogether 



ITS HUMILIATION. 35 

apart from the prediction regarding its decline, that the 
national existence of Egypt should continue. But, 
with the full assurance that this prediction should be 
fulfilled, its continuance must have seemed, to human 
reason, an utter impossibility. And yet to this paradox 
the Scripture from of old pledged itself. Egypt 
should be brought low; it should be set among the 
basest; and nevertheless it should be preserved. "It 
shall be there a base kingdom." And, as the Scripture 
has said, so has it been. Down through every age, 
even to our own times, the name of Egypt has lived 
on men's lips. The "kingdom" still exists, possessing 
its distinctive character and its ancient boundaries. Its 
ruler bears the title to-day of "Khediv-el-Misr," King 
of Egypt, while by the Egyptians he is spoken of as the 
Effendina, "the Great Lord." Its people have con- 
tinued, though for two thousand years they have ceased 
to be lords of the soil. Fierce persecutions and cease- 
less grinding oppression have neither driven them 
from their fatherland, nor extinguished them as a sep- 
arate race among their masters. The fellahin (the cul- 
tivators of the soil) form more than four-fifths of the 
entire population of Egypt ; and according to the esti- 
mate of a recent writer,* two-thirds of these may be 
set down as descendants of the ancient Egyptians who 
embraced Mohammedanism at the time of the Arab 
conquest, or who have since apostatized. In addition 
to these there are the Copts, who, along with their 
Christianity, retain the proud conviction that they are 
the lineal descendants of Egypt's ancient masters. 
Their number is variously stated, Lane giving it as 
150,000, and IVL'Coan as 500,000. The estimates of 
both writers agree, however, in representing them as 
about one-twelfth of the whole population. 

People and kingdom, therefore, alike continue. 
Through- all her many changes Egypt has preserved 

* M'Coan, Egypt as It Is, p. 23. 



$6 EGYPT. 

her identity. Downtrodden and oppressed, she has 
never ceased to hold some place in the commonwealth 
of nations, small though, in these latter days, that place 
has been. If to have foreseen the long and steady 
decay, of which the records of Egypt are the prolonged 
story, was marvellous, then, in the face of this, to have 
predicted its preservation was still more astounding. 

Let us now examine two other parts of the prophetic 
forecast. The greatest emphasis is laid upon the then 
future 

DEGRADATION OF EGYPT: 

"They shall be there a base kingdom. It shall be the 
basest of kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any 
more above the nations ; for I will diminish them that 
they shall no more rule over the nations. ,, Confronted 
as men then were, and were still to be for long ages 
after the Christian era had begun, by the fame, and the 
wisdom, and the strength, of Egypt, this must have been 
one of the most astounding features in the whole of the 
prophetic vision. 

It is striking to mark how this astonishment is re- 
echoed by the on-lookers of modern times. "It is 
melancholy/' says Lane, "to compare the present state 
of Egypt with its ancient prosperity, when the variety, 
elegance, and exquisite finish displayed in its manufac- 
tures attracted the admiration of surrounding nations, 
and its inhabitants w r ere in no need of foreign com- 
merce to increase their wealth or to add to their com- 
forts. Antiquarian researches show us that not only 
the Pharaohs and the priests and military chiefs, but 
also a great proportion of the agriculturists, even in 
the age of Moses and at a yet earlier period, passed 
a life of the most refined luxury, were clad in linen of 
the most delicate fabric, and reclined on couches and 
chairs which have served as models for the furniture 
of our modern saloons. Nature is as lavish as she was 
of old to the inhabitants of the valley of the Nile ; but 



ITS HUMILIATION. 37 

for many centuries they have ceased to enjoy the bene- 
fit of a steady government. Each of their successive 
rulers during this long lapse of time, considering the 
uncertain tenure of his power, has been almost wholly 
intent upon increasing his own wealth ; and thus a large 
portion of the nation has gradually perished, and the 
remnant, in general, has been reduced to a state of the 
most afflicting poverty."* 

The splendour and luxury of ancient Egypt were 
proverbial, and the monuments prove that refinement 
and luxury extended, as Lane has said, even to the 
cultivators. But where the children of Mizraim were 
once clothed in fine linen, and fared sumptuously every 
day, they now know nakedness and want. The fathers 
called forth the world's admiration, and the children 
now awaken, in almost as great a degree, its pity and 
contempt. Every thing that made Egypt what it was 
has perished. Its once endless wealth has long ago 
disappeared. Its arm of power is withered. Its indus- 
tries, which were its glory, have become a shame and 
a reproach. "When Bonaparte's savants entered Cairo 
they found its handicrafts, as its learning, at the lowest 
ebb of decadence." "With a few exceptions, these are 
still as backward as they were a hundred years ago." 
Mehemet AH made an attempt to revive them, and 
"costly failure" was the only result. M'Coan finds a 
main cause of this in "the low level of material civil- 
ization among nine-tenths of the population." t 

There is as little promise in its commerce as in its 
manufactures. Its trade received a fatal blow when 
the discovery was made of an ocean passage to India 
by the Cape; and it has sustained another stroke in 
that great triumph of modern engineering which has 
given to Egypt nearly the whole of its present im- 
portance. The Suez Canal "represents a distinct and 
more or less permanent loss. Not only has it cost the 

* Modern Egyptians, Vol. II., p. I. t Egypt as It Is. 



38 EGYPT. 

treasury in all more than £ 17,000,000 in money outlay, 
but it has diverted from the Egyptian ports and rail- 
ways a large and increasing transit traffic of great 
revenue value." * 

To some extent the fruitfulness of Egypt remains, it 
is true ; but a fertile soil will not in itself make a people 
great, and from this people all the elements of national 
greatness seem to have passed away. Polybius, in giv- 
ing an account of the various nationalities represented 
in Alexandria, speaks of the Egyptians as a keen and 
civilized race. To measure the depth to which they 
have fallen we have only to set against this the words 
of Niebuhr : "If an ancient origin and illustrious ances- 
tors could confer merit, the Copts would be a highly 
estimable people. They are descended from the ancient 
Egyptians ; and the Turks on this account call them in 
derision 'the posterity of Pharaoh/ But their uncouth 
figure, ignorance, and wretchedness do little credit to 
the sovereigns of ancient Egypt." The hopeless bond- 
age of centuries has quenched every spark of ambition 
in the breasts of the descendants of the Pharaohs ; and, 
under the iron heel of oppression, genius and talent, 
and even intellect itself, seem to have been extin- 
guished. The race, still physically sound, is mentally 
effete. The Egyptians are now, what for long ages 
they were held to be, a race of slaves. 

And it is not on the people only that this doom has 
pressed. The fulfilment of the decree, "They shall be 
there a base kingdom," can be read beneath the glitter 
of the throne itself. The schemes and improvements of 
Ismail Pasha have resulted, as is well-known, in hope- 
less bankruptcy. Sir George Campbell says : "The debt 
incurred by usurious interest had well-nigh swamped 
the state. It continually increased, and finally the 
Khedive placed himself in distinguished European 
Hands. He put his income in trust, as it were, for the 

* Ibid. 



ITS HUMILIATION. 39 

benefit of his creditors, and it has been so administered 
under European control for the last year. Let us see 
the result. . . . The Khedive was to be put on an 
allowance, as he expressed it at the time; £4,500,000 
being allowed for the expenses of the administration, 
and the rest applied for the benefit of the creditors. 
... By dint of whipping and spurring and getting all 
that it was possible to get by any means, the engage- 
ments to the creditors for the first two half-years — 
that is, those due in the beginning and middle of 1877 
— have been satisfied ; but that part of the engagement 
which affected the Egyptian administration and people 
has not been carried out. The allowances stipulated 
to carry on the government have not been paid ; and, 
from the Khedive downwards, all the officials have 
been kept out of their salaries, till the thing has become 
past endurance." Has Egypt ever presented a more 
humiliating spectacle? 

But worse remains behind. Few things show the 
weakness of the government more than the existence 
of the mixed courts forced upon the viceroy, and which 
exercise uncontrolled authority over the whole country 
in every case in which a foreigner is concerned. "The 
Khedive and all his government officers and belongings 
have been made subject to the new courts, and a very 
large proportion of their larger business — in fact, it 
seemed to me the main staple of it — is hearing cases 
and passing decrees against the Khedive. ... I 
hardly see how a government of this kind can be car- 
ried on in such subjection to courts in which the 
foreign element is wholly and absolutely dominant, 
which have claimed to decide on the illegality of the 
formal decrees of the ruling power, and which are 
under no control whatever."* "The English Consul," 
says Miss Amelia B. Edwards, "came to breakfast with 
us by invitation. He told us of some of the incon- 

* *An Inside View of 'Egypt 



40 EGYPT. 

veniences of the international muddle which is made up 
of consular tribunals, international tribunals, capitula- 
tions, et hoc genus omne, and which has gone far to 
render government almost impossible in Egypt. The 
laws of naturalization there are such that Turkish sub- 
jects, and even native Egyptians, can now obtain the 
privileges of foreigners, and evade the jurisdiction of 
the Egyptian Government; and Italians, Greeks, and 
Levantines may outrage the criminal and civil laws of 
the country they are residing in almost with im- 
punity/' * 

With all the enterprise and eclat of the reign of 
Ismail Pasha, the degradation of Egypt was perhaps 
never so evident before. "While we hear much of the 
higher titles, higher prerogatives, and more independent 
position of the Khedive of these days, it is curious to 
look back a little into history and see how far there has 
been a practical decadence. Ever since independent 
Mohammedan Egypt submitted to the Turks, it has 
never been so dependent as it is nozu. Till the begin- 
ning of the present century it was a suzerainty, and 
nothing more, that it acknowledged. Then came 
Mehemet Ali, not really appointed by the Porte, but 
rising to power by his own energy. It need not be 
recited how, during his long reign, he and his son 
Ibrahim set the Porte at defiance, and foreign powers 
as well. Now all that has changed. The ruler of 
Egypt has been obliged to* surrender his fleet, and in 
all things to submit to the corruption of the Constanti- 
nople offices. He feels himself so weak in the presence 
of foreign powers, and foreign financial corporations, 
that he yields many things that he knows he ought not 
to yield, all to the detriment of his country. "t The 
events which have transpired since those words were 
written, have onlv more fully revealed the misery of 
Egypt. She is still preserved, but she is there "a base 

* A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, pp. 64, 65. t Ibid. 



ITS HUMILIATION. 41 

kingdom ;" she is "the basest of the kingdoms." As 
Egypt mingles in the politics of the present time, the 
question is not, What will she do? but, What will be 
done with her? I have already spoken of the effects 
of the British occupation, but it has been able to achieve 
its reforms only through deeper abasement of the 
Egyptian sovereignty. We have had to assume the 
entire control of the Egyptian finances. The Khedive 
cannot impose or receive a single tax. He, his min- 
isters, and the entire body of the officials of Egypt, 
receive their salaries from the representative of the 
British government. Some time ago the Khedive, not 
unnaturally restive under such iron control, dismissed 
his prime minister and replaced him by one less sub- 
servient to the British government. The Khedive was 
immediately informed by Lord Cromer that the new 
minister must be dismissed and the old minister rein- 
stated within four and twenty hours. The Khedive 
obeyed. "According to the official Directory," says 
Mr. Curtis, "Lord Cromer is merely Consul -General 
and diplomatic agent of Great Britain at Cairo, but the 
Khedive is allowed to do nothing without his consent 
or approval. In the official lists he ranks with the 
Consul-General of the United States and other coun- 
tries, and on ceremonial occasions he appears with his 
colleagues of the Consular corps and makes his bow 
to the man on the throne. And the man on the throne 
returns the salute of his master, and is conscious that 
the quiet-looking gentleman with unostentatious man- 
ners and a pleasant smile controls his thoughts as well 
as his acts, for it is a waste of time for His Highness 
to suggest or plan or even imagine things that Lord 
Cromer does not approve/'* 

In the face of these things need we ask whose word 
this is which said from of old — "They shall be there 

A BASE KINGDOM. , . . FOR I WILL DIMINISH 
THEM?" 

* Egypt, Burmafi and British Malaysia (1905), p. 64. 



42 EGYPT. 

The last point in. the prediction to which we now 
draw attention is that, though the kingdom was to con- 
tinue, there should be 

NO NATIVE PRINCE 

of Egypt. "There shall be no more a prince out of the 
land of Egypt" (Ezek. xxx. 13). On this a few words 
will suffice. The prophecy has been completely and 
literally fulfilled. It is evident that the words did not 
mean that Egypt should be without a government. 
The "kingdom" was to continue. She was to have 
possessors and masters, but these were not to arise 
from among her own children. There was to be no 
longer a native ruler; but the land, with all that was 
its glory and its strength, was to be made waste under 
the disastrous dominion of those who were bound to 
the people by no ties of kindred or of country. In 
525 B. C. Egypt was conquered by the Persians un- 
der Cambyses, and its king, Psammetik III., was 
made prisoner. The country became a province of 
the Persian empire; but, unlike their degenerate 
offspring, the Egyptians of that period did not tame- 
ly bow under the foreign yoke. For the next one 
hundred and seventy years their history is simply 
a tale of rebellions, more or less temporarily suc- 
cessful, until they were finally subdued by Ochus in 
350 B. C. From that time to the present no native 
prince has ruled the land. Again and again has 
Egypt changed masters, but among them all no 
son of hers is numbered. There has Been "no more 
a prince out of the land of Egypt." 

Put together these five things : (1) the picture of 
the final condition of Thebes, Egypt's ancient capi- 
tal ; (2) that the greatness of Egypt should not re- 
turn, but that, on the contrary, it should sink into 
deepening decay; (3) that, notwithstanding clecay, 
it should still have its sovereign and continue a 



THE END OF THE MATTER. 43 

kingdom; but (4) that it should exist in deep hu- 
miliation and be the basest of the kingdoms ; and 
(5) that, though the throne should continue^ it 
should never be filled by one of Egypt's own sons. 
Place these predictions in the light of Egypt's pres- 
ent condition and past history, and what do they 
tell us? Surely, not merely that this is God's Book. 
That they do say; for these words were never man's, 
but "Holy men of God spake as they were moved 
by the Holy Ghost." But they tell also that God 
is Judge, that He will rebuke pride, and punisE 
sin. The Lord ruleth, and forgets neither His 
threatenings nor His promises, 



CHAPTER V. 

egypt {Continued). 

I again ask attention to this land of fame and mys- 
tery, and it may be well to say in one word why I do 
so. In order to leave no room for the suspicion that 
the predictions were written after the event, we have 
agreed not to press for a verdict from any fulfilment 
which took place before the beginning of the Christian 
era. But, if we are to succeed in banishing every 
suspicion, we must do something more. I can under- 
stand someone saying — not from any desire to oppose, 
but from a hesitancy which is in the circumstances 
perfectly natural — "Yes, the fulfilment you speak of is 
indeed marvellous. But quite as marvellous things 
have sometimes been brought about by chance, and it 
is perhaps no more than we might expect that, out of 
so many hundreds of predictions, some should come 
true." But the Scriptures enable us to meet this diffi- 
culty as easily as the other. They contain what I may 
call prophetic pictures. They do not merely indicate 
one feature among the many after-characteristics of 
peoples and of countries : they describe one feature 
after another till their condition is fully portrayed. 
With the fulfilment of one, or perhaps two, of these it 
might be imagined that chance had had to do, but, as 
one after another is added, the suspicion becomes more 
and more unreasonable, till, before the accumulating 
evidence, it is swept away completely and for ever. 



THE DESTRUCTION OF MEMPHIS. 45 

Such a picture we have in the prophecies concerning 
Egypt. We have already marked the fulfilment of 

FIVE PREDICTIONS. 

Let me now ask the reader to look with me at the 
fulfilment of 

TEN OTHERS. 

1. We began the previous chapter with a prediction 
concerning Thebes, the most ancient capital city of 
Egypt. Another famous city, which, as capital, took in 
time the place of Thebes, is mentioned in Ezekiel xxx. 
13: "Thus saith the Lord God: I will also destroy the 
idols, and I will cause the images to cease from Noph." 
This name preserves the designation Pa-Nouf by 
which the Egyptians named the ancient city known to 
us as 

MEMPHIS. 

It is said to have been founded by Menes, and that 
there the first regulations were made for the worship 
of the gods and the service of the temples. It is cer- 
tain that it was regarded with the deepest veneration. 
The monuments enumerate its gods and its temples, 
and Brugsch Bey speaks of it in his book, Egypt 
Under the Pharaohs, as "the great temple-city of 
Egypt- 
It was not unfitting, therefore, that He who was to 
judge Egypt for its idolatry, as well as for its sin, 
should say of Memphis that He would destroy its 
idols and cause the images to cease from it. But, 
though it might prove a fitting judgment, it was a 
most unlikely fate. The idols have not been destroyed 
elsewhere nor have the images ceased. Both are found 
to-day in Thebes, which was in ruins when Memphis 
still retained its splendour. They are found elsewhere, 
and, from what we know of the general condition of 
Egypt, we should say it was highly probable they 
would be found here also. 



46 EGYPT. 

To those who looked upon Memphis at the begin- 
ning of the Christian era this fate must have seemed 
more improbable still. Strabo found the city "large 
and populous, next to Alexandria in size," and speaks 
of its gods and temples and statues. In the beginning 
of the seventh century it was the residence of the 
Governor of Egypt, who made terms there with the 
Arab invaders. The city of Cairo having been founded 
in the neighbourhood, the population drifted away 
from the old city, and its materials were taken to build 
and extend the new. The vast mass of Memphis, how- 
ever, seemed to defy all attempts at destruction. Abd- 
ul-Latif, an Arab traveller,, who visited it in the 13th 
century, says: "its ruins still offer to the eyes of the 
spectator a collection of wonderful works which con- 
found the intellect, and to describe which the most 
eloquent man would labour in vain. The longer we 
look upon the scene, the higher rises the admiration it 
inspires; and every new glance that we cast upon the 
ruins reveals a new charm. Scarcely have they awak- 
ened a distinct idea in the soul of the spectator, than a 
still more admirable idea suggests itself; and just as 
you believe you have gained complete knowledge of 
them, at that very moment the conviction forces itself 
on the mind, that what you. think you know is still very 
far from the truth." 

And now what of to-day? So completely has the 
doom been accomplished that a century ago the very 
site of Memphis was a matter of dispute. Later in- 
vestigations have settled that question, but they have 
also verified the truth of the prediction. With the ex- 
ception of one colossal statue (the property of the 
English nation, but which has never been removed, 
and which Wilkinson says, will some day be burned 
by the Arabs for lime), and a small figure of red 
granite, both of extraordinary beautv, but broken and 
laid on the ground — with the exception of these, the 
idols and the images and the temples— the city and all 



THE DESTRUCTION OF MEMPHIS. 47 

it contained have passed away. Wilkinson writes: 
"there is very little else worthy of remark amidst the 
mounds of Memphis/' "We are surprised to find so 
few remains of this vast city." Brugsch Bey says: 
"All that remains of this celebrated city at the present 
time consists of heaps of fragments of columns and 
altars, and carvings which once belonged to the temples 
of Memphis — a far-stretching mass of mounds, out of 
which shine in the clear sunlight the remains of the 
half-destroyed chambers and halls of ancient houses. 
Those travellers who visit the remains of Memphis in 
the hope of recognising some vestiges worthy of its 
fame, will be little satisfied with the sad prospect which 
meets the eye." Miss Amelia B. Edwards thus de- 
scribes a visit to Memphis: "We are all gathered 
round the brink of a muddy pool in the midst of 
which lies a shapeless block of blackened and corroded 
limestone. This, it seems, is the famous prostrate 

colossus of Rameses the Great So here 

it lies, face downwards and drowned once a year by 
the Nile; visible only when the pools left by the in- 
undation have evaporated and all the muddy hollows 
are dried up 

"Where, however, is the companion colossus? 
Where is the Temple itself? Where are the pylons of 
the obelisks, of the avenues of sphinxes? Where, in 
short, is Memphis? 

"The dragoman shrugs his shoulders and points to 
the barren mounds among the palms. . . . And is 
this all? No — not quite all. There are some mud 
huts yonder, in among the trees ; and in front of one 
of these we find a number of sculptured fragments — 
battered sphinxes, torsos without legs, sitting figures 
without heads — in green, black, and red granite. 
Ranged in an irregular semicircle on the sward, they 
seem to sit in forlorn conclave, half solemn, half ludi- 
crous, with the goats browsing round, and the little 
Arab children hiding behind them. 



48 EGYPT, 



<c 



f Near this, in another pool, lies another colossus— 
not the fellow to that which we saw first ; but a smaller 
one — also face downwards, of red granite. 

"And this is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of 
cities; a few large rubbish-heaps^ a dozen or so of 
broken statues, and a name ! . . . Where are those 
stately ruins that even in the middle ages extended 
over a space estimated at 'half a day's journey in every 
direction?' One can hardly believe that a great city 
ever flourished on this spot, or understand how it 
should have been effaced so utterly."* 

2. We turn once more to the general aspect and for- 
tunes of the entire country. The hand of decay was 
also to be placed upon 

THE RIVERS AND THE CANALS. 

We read: "I will make the rivers dry" (Ezek. xxx. 
12) ; and again, "The waters shall fail from the sea and 
the river shall be wasted and become dry. And the 
rivers shall stink: the streams (or canals) of Egypt 
shall be minished and dried up" (Isaiah xix. 5, 6). By 
"the sea" is in all probability meant the Nile. It was 
named oceanos by Homer, and has been called the sea, 
or the sea of the Nile, by both ancient and modern 
Egyptians. "The rivers" which were to "become dry" 
and to "stink" were the arms of the Nile which, passing 
through the plain of the Delta, poured the waters of 
this gigantic stream into the Mediterranean. Part of 
this prediction is as yet unfulfilled. The waters have 
not as yet failed from the sea, but nevertheless we 
trace even here fulfilments as wonderful as those 
which startle us in other parts of the prophetic descrip- 
tion. The hand of decay has made a deepening impress 
on the rivers and the canals of Egypt. In his article 
on the Nile in Smith's Bible Dictionary, Mr. Reginald 

* A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, pp. 97-99- 



THE RIVERS AND CANALS. 49 

Stuart Poole says : "The great difference between the 
Nile of Egypt in the present day and in ancient times is 
caused by the failure of some of its branches. . . . 
The river was famous for its seven branches, and 
under the Roman dominion eleven were counted, of 
which, however, there were but seven principal ones. 
Herodotus notices that there were seven, of which he 
says that two, the present Damietta and Rosetta 
branches, were originally artificial, and he therefore 
speaks of 'the five mouths.' Now, as for a long period 
past, there are no riavi gable and unobstructed branches 
but these two that Herodotus distinguishes as the 
work of man." Even these are accessible only to 
small vessels. "The five other ancient mouths of the 
river have long ago silted up, and their course can now 
be hardly traced over the great alluvial plain and 
through the network of canals and lakes which inter- 
pose between the sea and this point."* 

The rivers then have been made dry, and instead of 
flowing in their ancient course have become stinking 
pools and marshes. What had formerly ministered to 
health and pleasure was changed into a danger and an 
offence. For there can be no doubt that what is shown 
here in the vivid picture of prophecy was a condition 
through which they actually passed. Referring to one 
of the canals of Cairo, Wilkinson says that to close it, 
and turn its bed into a street would have the "advant- 
age of freeing the houses on its banks from the noxious 
vapours that rise when the water has retired and left 
a bed of liquid mud/' What now of the canals? 
Amrou, the MJahommedan conqueror of Egypt, wrote 
to the caliph that it was necessary that one-third of the 
entire revenues of the country should be devoted to 
the maintenance of the canals. This has never been 
done, and the result has been that the canals also have 
been "minished and dried up." The predecessors of 

* Egypt as It Is, p. 5. 



50 EGYPT. 

the present dynasty seem to have specially sinned in 
this respect. "The Mameluke Beys/' says Malte Brun, 
"applied to their own private use the funds destined to 
the support of these public works, on which the fer- 
tility of Egypt depends. Many canals were even 
abandoned by these barbarians, who thus destroyed 
the sources of their own revenues." Mehemet Ali and 
Ismail Pasha have undoubtedly tried to atone for the 
neglect of the past. The resources of the country -and 
the lives of her children have been lavished in the at- 
tempt to undo the mischief which has resulted from 
former negligence. But their efforts have been only 
partially successful. The Menoufieh Canal, for ex- 
ample, used formerly to communicate with the Rosetta 
branch of the Nile, but is now dammed up. Mr. Vil- 
liers Stuart, who was deputed to examine and report 
upon the state of Egypt in 1882 says: "One complaint 
often made to me on the subject of irrigation in the 
Delta, is that the canals run dry at the critical season 
of the year, and when the quantity and quality of the 
cotton crop are most seriously affected by any defic- 
iency in the water supply."* 

Of the Said, or Upper Egypt, he writes : If "there 
were a canal system as perfect as in the Delta, it would 
far exceed it in richness of vegetation and in wealth- 
producing power. "f As it is at present it depends for 
its one crop on the annual overflow of the Nile. Were 
a system of canal-irrigation introduced "it could grow 
three crops where it now grows but one." But is this 
a modern discovery? Did the wise Egyptians live for 
centuries in the country without suspecting that there 
was so easy a method of multiplying its fertility? No, 
this part of the country now condemned to comparative 
barrenness and poverty for the lack of irrigation, was 
once covered with canals. The following extracts ex- 
plain how the change has come about: "Canals exist, 

* Egypt After the War, p. 51. f Ibid. p. 241. 



THE RIVER SCENERY. SI 

but many have been allowed to silt up. They all want 
deepening, and they ought to be connected together on 
a scientific system."* "The shallownesss of the canals 
is partly due to the fact that the late Khedive diverted 
to his sugar estates and to other purposes the forced 
labour that ought to have been applied to keep them 
clean."t "There seems no doubt that the ancient 
Egyptians kept the canals in Upper Egypt full; this 
accounts for the much larger population in the time 
of the Pharaohs."f "We could irrigate our land much 
better," the peasants said to him, "and more of it, if the 
canals had water in them, but they are dry; if they 
were deepened, there would be water in them always. "§ 
The canals, as the Scripture predicted, have been min- 
ished and dried up. 
3. Another feature is 

THE RIVER SCENERY 

of Egypt as presented in the prophetic picture indicated 
a further remarkable change. Mr. Reginald Stuart 
Poole, formerly of the British Museum, writes : "The 
monuments and the narratives of ancient writers show 
us in the Nile of Egypt in old times, a stream bordered by 
flags and reeds, the covert of abundant wild-fowl, and 
bearing on its waters the fragrant flowers of the vari- 
ous-coloured lotus. Now in Egypt scarcely any reeds 
or water-plants — the famous papyrus being nearly if 
not quite extinct, and the lotus almost unknown — are 
to be seen except in the marshes near the Mediterran- 
ean. This also was prophesied by Isaiah : "The 
papyrus-reeds in the river and everything growing (lit 
'sown') in the river shall be dried up, driven away (by 
the wind) and (shall) not be' (xix. 7). When it is 
recollected that the water-plants of Egypt were so 
abundant as to be a great source of revenue in the 

* Ibid. p. 241. t P. 243. i P. 261. § P. 277. 



52 EGYPT. 

prophet's time and much later, the exact fulfilment of 
his predictions is a valuable evidence of the truth of the 
old opinion as to 'the sure word of prophecy/ " 

This was indeed no small part of the burden of loss 
and decay which was to lay the pride of Egypt in the 
dust. An inscription speaks of an Egyptian Queen as 
having reigned over the land of the papyrus and the 
lotus. These plants formed so striking a feature of 
Upper and Lower Egypt respectively that they became 
the symbols of the districts. They were also a boon to 
the people and a source of considerable revenue to the 
crown. "The lotus, the papyrus, and other similar 
productions of the land, during and after the inunda- 
tion, were, for the poor, one of the greatest blessings 
nature ever provided for any people."* They were 
largely used as food. The lotus flowers were in con- 
stant demand for the bouquets and garlands which the 
Egyptian host presented to and with which he adorned 
his guests. The seeds were pounded and made into 
bread. The papyrus was put to many uses. "They 
employ the roots/' Pliny writes, "as firewood, and for 
making various utensils. They even construct small 
boats of the plant; and out of the rind sails, mats, 
clothes, bedding, and ropes/' But that which made it 
famous, and which has preserved the name to our own 
time, was the use made of it as a writing material.' 
Pliny, who wrote in the latter half of the first century 
of our era, describes the appearance and the growth 
of the plant and the various kinds of paper which were 
formed from it. We know that papyrus was in use till 
the seventh century, and until that time the plant was 
still found in its ancient home. But then as now it 
stood written: "The reeds and the flags shall wither 
away. The meadow ("here used," says Gesenius, "of 
the grassy places on the banks of the Nile") by the 
Nile, by the brink of the Nile, and all that is sown by 

* Wilkinson. Ancient Egyptians, L, p. 168. 



EXTINCTION OF ITS FISHERIES. 53 

the Nile shall become dry, be driven away, and be no 
more" (Isaiah xix. 6, 7). And to-day all is fulfilled. 
'The plant is now unknown in Egypt."* The pink and 
the blue lotus, which appear so frequently in the paint- 
ings, have also passed away. The traveller is struck 
by the absence of verdure on the Nile banks. "It is a 
curious fact that no water-plants or weeds grow on 
the banks of the Nile; a sedgy margin is never to be 
met with in this country."! 

4. A similar prediction is made regarding 

THE FISHERIES. 

"Herodotus says that a certain number of the poorer 
Egyptians 'lived almost entirely on fish.' It was so 
abundant that it was necessarily cheap. The Nile pro- 
duced several kinds which were easily caught; and in 
Lake Moeris the abundance of fish was such that the 
Pharaohs are said to have derived from the sale a 
revenue of above £94,000 a year. . . . The fish- 
ermen of Egypt formed a numerous class, and the 
salting and drying of fish furnished occupation to a 
large number of persons."t Diodorous refers to the 
fisheries of Egypt in similar terms, showing that the 
industry within fifty years of the beginning of the 
Christian era had suffered no diminution. Fish con- 
stituted even then a large portion of the daily food of 
the people, and dried fish formed a large item in Egypt- 
ian exports. But it stood written: "The fishers also 
shall lament, and all they that cast angle into the Nile 
shall mourn, and they that spread nets upon the waters 
shall languish" (Isaiah xix. 8). And this too has 
been accomplished. In the decline of Egypt the fish- 
pools and their conduits were neglected and ruined, 
and the fishers lamented, mourned, and languished. 
"Having once been very productive, and a main source 

* Ibid. II., p. 97. t Irby and Mangles. 

t Rawlinson's Egypt and Babylon, pp. 318, 319. 



54 EGYPT. 

of revenue as well as of sustenance, the fisheries are 
now scarcely of any moment, excepting about Lake 
Menzaleh, and in some few places elsewhere, chiefly 
in the North of Egypt/'* 
But 

5. THE REMAINING INDUSTRIES 

of Egypt were also to suffer. The prophet continues : 
"Moreover they that work in combed flax, and they 
that weave white cloth shall be ashamed. And her 
pillars shall be broken in pieces, and all they that 
work for hire shall be grieved in soul. . . . Neither 
shall there be for Egypt any work which head or tail, 
palm branch or rush, may do" (xix. 9, 10, 15). "The 
pillars" are the support of the social fabric, the rich 
and noble by whose patronage the industries of the 
country were encouraged. "Head" and "tail" are ex- 
pressive figures of those who lead and those who fol- 
low, as are the lofty palm-branch and the humble rush 
of high and low, the aristocracy and the masses of the 
people. It is. implied that these are bound together in 
a fellowship of labour, and we are told that a day was 
to come when their occupation should be gone and the 
fellowship should cease. 

That the hand is laid here upon what formed a special 
feature of Egyptian life we shall immediately see. But 
to understand how heavy this doom was, and the im- 
probability of its fulfilment, we have to recall the fact 
that the greatness of Egypt lay not so much in her 
military power, as in her civilization. Her arts and her 
industries were her chief glories. Before showing 
that their lustre is undimmed by modern achievements 
I may say that they were well and long sustained by 
"the pillars." "Considerable sums were expended in 
furnishing houses, and in many artificial caprices. Rich 
jewels and costly works of art were in great request, 

* Reginald Stuart Poole. 



EXTINCTION OF ITS INDUSTRIES. 55 

as well among the inhabitants of the provincial capitals, 
as at Thebes and Memphis : they delighted in splendid 
equipages, elegant and commodious boats, numerous 
attendants, horses, dogs, and other requisites for the 
chase; and besides, their houses, their villas, and their 
gardens were laid out with no ordinary expense."* 
"The rich frequently had ornamental works, statues, 
and furniture of solid gold."f Expense was lavished 
upon them even to the tomb. The embalming of a 
corpse sometimes cost, according to Diodorous, £250 
sterling. 

That the Palm-branch and the Rush, the higher and 
the lower classes, alike shared in the vast and continu- 
ous labours which were characteristic of Egyptian 
civilization has been abundantly proved by the monu- 
ments. The priests, who were bound by an exacting 
ritual, held the first position in the state ; they were 
also charged with the administration of the law. The 
chief architects were princes, and were permitted to 
intermarry with the royal family. The military force 
consisted of 410,000 men, exclusive of the large force 
of mercenaries, and the commands were held by the 
nobility. These last occupied posts also in the royal 
household, in the government of the country, in the 
management of the royal estates, and, notwithstanding 
that a shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians, 
even the office of superintendent of the herds was filled 
by men of rank. 

This union of classes is an indication of the place 
which art and industry held in the public estimation. 
Excellence was their constant aim, we may say their 
passion; and the utmost care was taken to secure the 
highest efficiency in every department. "No trades- 
man," says Diodorous, "was permitted to meddle in 
political affairs, or to hold any civil office in the state, 

* Wilkinson. The Ancient Egyptians, II., pp. 218-219. 
f Ibid., p. 167. 



56 EGYPT. 

lest His thoughts should be distracted by the incon- 
sistency of his pursuits. . . . They feared that 
without such a law . . . their proper occupations 
would be neglected. . . . They also considered 
that to follow more than one occupation would be 
detrimental to their own interests and to those of the 
community; and that, when men, from a motive of 
avarice, are induced to engage in numerous branches 
of art, the result generally is that they are unable to 
excel in any." 

The results of this care have secured for Egypt its 
undying fame. The byssus, woven in the looms of 
those who worked "in combed flax," was sold for its 
weight in gold; and Pliny, accounting for the large 
quantity of flax cultivated in Egypt explains that the 
Egyptians exported linen to Arabia and India, and 
adds that the quality of that produced by Egyptian 
looms was far superior to any other. "Nor was the 
praise bestowed upon that manufacture unmerited; 
and the quality of one piece of linen found near Mem- 
phis fully justifies it, and excites equal admiration at 
the present day, being to the touch comparable to silk, 
and not inferior in texture to our finest cambric. . . 
Some idea may be given of its texture from the num- 
ber of threads in the inch, which is 540 (270 double 
threads) in the warp," and no in the woof. "It is 
covered with small figures and hieroglyphics, so finely 
drawn that here and there the lines are with difficulty 
followed by the eye. . . . The perfection of its 
threads is equally surprising; the knots and breaks, 
seen in our best cambric, are not found in holding it to 
the light."* 

Their superiority was as marked in spinning as in 
weaving. The threads employed, for example, in the 
manufacture of nets astonished the ancients by their 
fineness and strength. Some of the nets, Pliny says, 

* Ibid., pp. 75-8o. 



EXTINCTION OF ITS INDUSTRIES. 57 

"were so delicate that they would pass through a man's 
ring, and a single person could carry a sufficient num- 
ber of them to surround a whole wood. Julius Lupus, 
who died while Governor of Egypt, had some of these 
nets, each string of which consisted of 150 threads; a 
fact perfectly surprising to those who are not aware 
that the Rhodians preserve to this day in the temple 
of Minerva a linen corslet presented to them by Ama- 
sis, King of Egypt, whose threads are composed each 
of 365 fibres." Herodotus mentions another presented 
by the same king to the Lacedaemonians. "It was of 
linen/' he says, "ornamented with numerous figures of 
animals worked in gold and cotton. Each thread of 
the corslet was worthy of admiration. For, though 
very fine, every one was composed of 360 other threads, 
all distinct." 

The "combing" of the flax was a marked feature in 
the manufacture. The cloth was subjected to a pro- 
cess of smoothing, or calendering. They also anti- 
cipated the moderns in the use of dyes. "Another very 
remarkable discovery of the Egyptians was the use of 
mordants. They were acquainted with the efTect of 
acids on colour, and submitted the cloth they dyed to 
one of the same processes adopted in our modern 
manufactories ; and while, from his account, we per- 
ceive how little Pliny understood the process he was 
describing, he at the same time gives us the strongest 
evidence of its truth. 'In Egypt,' he says, 'they stain 
clothes in a wonderful manner. They take them in 
their original state, quite white, and imbue them, not 
with a dye, but with certain drugs which have the 
power of absorbing and taking colour. When this is 
done there is still no appearance of change in the 
cloths ; but so soon as they are dipped into a bath of 
the pigment, which has been prepared for the purpose, 
they are taken out properly coloured. The singular 
thing is, that though the bath contains only one colour, 



58 EGYPT. 

several hues are imparted to the fjiece . . . nor 
can the colour be afterward washed off."* 

This is not the only indication presented by their 
manufactures that they were acquainted with the 
secrets of modern science. "That the Egyptians pos- 
sessed considerable knowledge of chemistry and the 
use of metallic-oxides, is evident from the nature of 
the colours applied to their glass and porcelain."f 
Glass cutting was supposed to have been first invented 
in the 17th century by Lehmann at Prague. "But the 
specimens of ancient glass, cut, engraved, and ground, 
discovered in Egypt suffice to prove it was practised 
there of old. . . . Emery powder and the lapi- 
dary's wheel were also used in Egypt."J 

The manufacture of glass itself has also been re- 
garded as an invention of modern times. "They were 
well acquainted," says Wilkinson, to whose great work 
I mainly confine myself for testimony as to the char- 
acter of Egyptian industries, "not only with the manu- 
facture of common glass for beads and bottles of or- 
dinary quality, but with the art of staining it of divers 
colours. . . . And so skilful were they in this 
complicated process, that they imitated the most fanci- 
ful devices, and succeeded in counterfeiting the rich 
hues and brilliancy of precious stones. The green 
emerald, the purple amethyst, and other expensive 
gems were successfully imitated. . . . Some mock 
pearls (found by me at Thebes) have been so well 
counterfeited that even now it is difficult with a strong 
lens to detect the imposition."§ Winckelmann speaks 
of two pieces of glass mosaic which show the perfec- 
tion attained by the workers in glass. One of the 
pieces, "though not quite an inch in length, and a third 
of an inch in breadth exhibits, on a dark and variegated 
ground, a bird resembling a duck in very bright and 

* Ibid. II., p. 83. t Ibid. II., p. 66. % Ibid. II., p. 67. 
§ Ibid. II., p. 64. 



EXTINCTION OF ITS INDUSTRIES. 59 

varied colours. . . . The outlines are bold and de- 
cided, the colours beautiful and pure, and the effect 
very pleasing; in consequence of the artist having al- 
ternately introduced an opaque and a transparent glass. 
The most delicate pencil of a miniature painter could 
not have traced with greater sharpness the circle of the 
eyeball, or the plumage of the neck and wings, at which 
part this specimen has been broken. But the most sur- 
prising thing is that the reverse exhibits the same bird, 
in which it is impossible to discover any difference in 
the smallest details; whence it may be concluded that 
the figure of the bird continues through its thickness." 

Nor was glass merely used for ornamental purposes. 
Vases and bottles were manufactured, the latter being 
sometimes protected by wickerwork or encased in 
leather. They also manufactured porcelain. "Many 
of the porcelain cups discovered at Thebes present a 
tasteful arrangement of varied hues, and show the skill 
of the Egyptians and the great experience they pos- 
sessed in this branch of art."* They were famed also 
for their tanning and their work in leather. In cut- 
ting the leather they made use of the semi-circular 
knife, and "what we term 'the circular cut' was known 
to the ancient Egyptians 3,300 years ago. . . . The 
fine quality of the straps placed across the bodies of 
mummies, discovered at Thebes, and the beauty of the 
figures stamped upon them satisfactorily prove the skill 
of 'the leather cutters' as well as the antiquity of em- 
bossing Many of the occupations of their 

trade are portrayed on the painted walls of the tombs 
of Thebes. They made shoes, sandals, the coverings 
of seats of chairs or sofas, bow-cases, and most of the 
ornamental furniture of the chariot."t So great was 
the consumption of leather that skins were largely im- 
ported from foreign countries. 

It is impossible to present in a cursory notice like 

* Ibid. II., pp. 65-66. f Ibid. II., pp. 93-102. 



60 EGYPT. 

the present any adequate picture of the manifold in- 
dustries of this land. "Many arts and inventions were 
in common use in Egypt for centuries before they are 
generally supposed to have been known; and we are 
now and then as much surprised to find that certain 
things were old 3,000 years ago, as the Egyptians 
would be if they could hear us talk of them as late 
discoveries."* They were acquainted with mining, with 
the crushing of auriferous quartz to obtain the gold, 
with gold-refining, with gold-beating in which they 
manufactured leaf of great fineness, and with the mak- 
ing of gold and silver wire which they used in weaving 
patterns in which the details were sometimes so minute 
as to be scarcely visible to the naked eye. From this it 
appears that they were acquainted with the use of the 
magnifying glass. "Among the remarkable inventions 
of a remote era among the Egyptains may be mentioned 
bellows and siphons." They also used the syringe. 
They seem to have excelled the moderns in their 
knowledge of metallurgy. "The labour experienced 
by the French engineers, who removed the obelisk of 
Luxor from Thebes, in cutting a space less than two 
feet deep along the face of its partially-decomposed 
pedestal, suffices to show that even with our excellent 
modern implements we find considerable difficulty in 
doing what to the Egyptians would have been one of 
the least arduous tasks." There is good ground for 
supposing that "the Egyptians must have possessed 
certain secrets in hardening or tempering copper with 

which we are totally unacquainted They 

had even the secret of giving to bronze, or brass blades 
a certain degree of elasticity. . . . Another re- 
markable feature in their bronze is the resistance it 
offers to the effect of the atmosphere, some continuing 
smooth and bright though buried for ages and since 
exposed to the damp of European climates. They had 

* Ibid. II., p. 57. 



EXTINCTION OF ITS INDUSTRIES. 6l 

also the secret of covering the surface with a rich 
patina of dark or light green, or other colour, by ap- 
plying acids to it; as was done by the Greeks and 
Romans, and as we do to the iron guns on board our 
men-of-war."* 

The moving of immense masses of stone hundreds 
of miles "shows that the Egyptians were well acquaint- 
ed with mechanical powers, and the mode of applying 
a locomotive force with the most wonderful success." 
But their skill "was not confined to the mere moving 
of immense weights; their wonderful knowledge of 
mechanism is shown in the erection of obelisks, and in 
the position of large stones, raised to a considerable 
height, and adjusted with the utmost precision; some- 
times, too, in situations where the space will not admit 
the introduction of the inclined plane."f 

In referring to Egyptian carpentry, Wilkinson speaks 
of "the perfection to which they had arrived in the 
construction of the chairs and ottomans of their 
rooms." With the elegant designs of these, which 
have been reproduced in the furniture of modern draw- 
ing rooms, all are familiar. Of their architecture, 
sculpture, and painting I need not speak, nor of the 
embalming which has preserved the human body, and 
kept intact every feature, and the very expression of 
the face for thousands of years. It is enough to say 
that the superiority we have already remarked dis- 
tinguished every industry from the highest to the 
lowest. "So wisely," says Herodotus, "was medicine 
managed by them that no doctor was permitted to prac- 
tise any but his own peculiar branch. Some were 
oculists, who only studied diseases of the eye; others 
attended solely to complaints of the head; others to 
those of the teeth. . . . And it is a singular fact, 
that their dentists adopted a method, not very long 
practised in Europe, of stopping teeth with gold, proofs 

* Ihld, II., pp. 156-159. t II., pp. 309-311. 



62 EGYPT. 

of which have been obtained from some mummies of 
Thebes."* Even in the meanest employments the same 
excellence was shown. The skill of the shepherds in 
rearing animals of different kinds was the result, says 
Diodorous, of the experience they had inherited from 
their parents, and subsequently increased by their own 
observation; and the spirit of emulation, which is 
natural to all men, constantly adding to their stock of 
knowledge, they introduced many improvements un- 
known to other people. Their sheep were twice shorn, 
and twice brought forth lambs in the course of one 
year ; and though climate was the chief cause of these 
phenomena, the skill and attention of the shepherd 
were also necessary ; nor, if the animals were neglected, 
would unaided nature alone suffice for their continu- 
ance."! 

Now, in the face of this stupendous and varied ac- 
tivity, in^the face of the arts and industries into which 
the strength of the entire population was put and in 
which they had attained unrivalled excellence, it was 
declared that all should pass away. The pillars of the 
state, it was said, should be broken, and the workers 
for hire should be grieved in soul. There should be 
no work which either high or low should do. If the 
people were to continue and the kingdom to remain it 
seemed most unlikely that any such fate could ever 
befall them. And long after the prophecy was uttered 
there seemed to be no sign of its fulfilment. When Alex- 
ander conquered Egypt new markets were opened up 
for her products, and the destruction of Tyre and 
Sidon gave new life to her commerce. Diodorous, 
who has been so often quoted in the above description, 
completed his history within a few years of the birth 
of our Lord, and he speaks not of what had been, but 
of what was still a feature of his own time. Pliny 
wrote ioo years later and his testimony is the same. 

* Ibid, II., p, 169. f Ibid. II., p. 350, 



EXTINCTION OF ITS INDUSTRIES. 63 

Till Christianity became the religion of the Roman 
empire the priests ministered in the temples, though 
with diminished lustre. But with this change that work 
for head and palm-branch passed away. In the decline 
which followed and which deepened so rapidly under 
the Arab and Turkish dominions, the glory and the 
wealth of Egypt perished. "In the three centuries of 
mixed Turkish and Mamlouk misrule which followed 
the Ottoman conquest, Arab art of every kind lost its 
cunning, and when Bonaparte's savants entered Cairo 
they found its handicrafts, as its learning, at the lowest 
ebb of decadence. Twenty years later Mehemet AH 
began a series of efforts to revive the old mechanical 
skill for which Egyptian workmen had once been fam- 
ous, but the special aim and the methods of his reforms 
in this direction were alike unsound, and costly failure 
was the result."* "Regardless of expense, he im- 
ported large quantities of costly machinery with skilled 
operatives at high wages, erecting vast mills all over 
the Delta." The ruins of these and of others erected 
by his successors in their attempt to succeed where he 
had failed have proved how irreversible is this doom 
pronounced from of old. The attempt has resulted 
"only in a great waste of time, money, machinery, and 
labour."f Relics of former skill which remained even 
till comparatively recent times have also passed away. 
Speaking of Damietta M'Coan says : "It was formerly 
famous for its manufacture of leather, and for the 
striped linen cloths called Dimity (from Dimyat the 
Arab name of the town) but both these have long 
ceased to be specialties of the place. "t Her agricul- 
ture still remains the one employment and stay of her 
people, but it is not the agriculture of the past. Its 
unskilfulness and poverty awaken alike the scorn and 
the pity of the nations who admired and envied the 

* De Leon, The Khedive's Egypt, p. 200. 
t M'Coan, Egypt as It Is, p. 296. J Egypt as It Is, pp. 64, 65. 



64 EGYPT. 

agriculture which once bore the stamp of Egyptian 
greatness. 

6. We have now to notice another remarkable 
feature in the prophetic picture. 

THE CONDITION OF ALL THE SURROUNDING 
COUNTRIES 

is vividly portrayed. In describing the effects of the 
Babylonian inroad, God, speaking by Ezekiel, says : "I 
will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of 
the countries that are desolate, and her cities among 
the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty 
years" (xxix. 12). But the ruin of that time was in 
itself a prophecy; for in the description of her after 
and permanent condition the same words recur : "They 
shall be desolate in the midst of the countries that are 
desolate, and her cities shall be in the midst of the 
cities that are wasted" (xxx. 7). The first judgment 
was but the type of the desolation which was yet to 
fall. It was the blighting touch of the early frost 
which told of the setting in of a dark and bitter winter. 
The prediction, it will be noticed, takes a wide range. 
It foretells disaster not for Egypt only, but also for all 
the surrounding countries. It is to be a desolation in 
the midst of desolations. A hurried glance at the 
countries bordering on Egypt will show that the words 
have been made good, and that even at the beginning 
of our era it was utterly impossible that their fulfil- 
ment could have been foreseen. On the north Egypt 
is bounded by the waters of the Mediterranean ; but on 
the west, south, and partly on the east, she looked out 
upon other countries which, long after the beginning 
of the Christian era, were great and populous. On 
the north-west lies the province of Barca, the eastern 
division of Tripoli. It includes the ancient Cyrenai'ca, 
sometimes called Pentapolis from the five great Cities 
of Cyrene, Apollonia, Ptolemais, Arsinoe, and Beren- 



CONDITION OF ALL SURROUNDING COUNTRIES. 65 

ice. Readers of the New Testament are familiar with 
its mention of Cyrene, and the "parts of Libya about 
Cyrene." Over the whole country were scattered 
wealthy and spendid cities, which retained their pros- 
perity at the time of our Lord. In the year 115 a. d. 
the Jews, great numbers of whom dwelt in Cyrenaica, 
broke out into rebellion. During the insurrection and 
its suppression the country suffered greatly ; but it was 
colonized afresh by the Emperor Hadrian. Under the 
fostering care of the Romans it revived, and, though it 
afterwards suffered much from the oppression of its 
Greek governors, it continued to prosper. In the fourth 
century it was overrun by barbarous hordes from the 
south, and the city of Cyrene was destroyed. Three 
centuries afterwards a heavier blow fell. The Per- 
sians under Khosroo Purveez invaded Egypt, and then 
poured into Cyrenaica, committing such dreadful havoc 
that the country was almost depopulated. Under the 
Saracens the work of devastation was completed. 
Cyrenaica was so oppressed that the inhabitants of 
Barca, for example, emigrated in a body, and that city 
has since wholly disappeared. The entire country 
gradually succumbed, and its cities have remained in 
ruins ever since. There are now only two places which 
deserve the name of towns ; and the rest of the coun- 
try is inhabited solely by wandering Arabs. Cyrenaica 
still deserves the name "Jebel Akhbar" (the green 
mountain), but the luxurious and pleasure-loving 
Cyrenians have long since passed away. Their cities, 
once filled with the noise of busy, joyous, life, are silent 
as the grave, save when the Arabs chance to rest for 
a while within their ruined walls. On that side of 
Egypt there is certainly desolation. 

To the south-west of Barca is Fezzan, the ancient 
Phazania, the great oasis of the Sahara which bounds 
Egypt on the west. In 19 b. c. Cornelius Balba ob- 
tained a triumph for the conquest of the country, and 
representations of its cities formed part of the proces- 



66 EGYPT. 

sional display. This country also has been desolated. 
Its great cities have long since crumbled into ruin; 
and the entire population for a territory of three hun- 
dred miles in length and two hundred in breadth, does 
not exceed twenty-six thousand, or the number of in- 
habitants in one of our minor towns. Within the past 
century its trade has almost wholly disappeared. "The 
inhabitants formerly depended to a great extent on 
the caravans which passed through the country; but 
this trade has been almost wholly lost, and Fezzan has 
in consequence become greatly impoverished and de- 
populated. The oases are capable of yielding an ample 
supply of the necessaries of life, but cultivation is 
neglected, and several oases have been altogether aban- 
3oned." 

We turn to the south. The southern boundary of 
Egypt was drawn at Philse, above the first cataract. 
Beyond this stretched the great kingdom of Ethopia, 
sharing with Egypt itself the blessing of the same 
mighty stream which rolls onward its sea-like waters 
from the Equator to the Mediterranean. For about 
fifteen miles below the junction of the Blue and the 
White Nile, the river flows through a gloomy pass 
between the mountains, and then sweeps out into broad 
plains covered with vegetation as far as the eye can 
reach. In this fertile district lay Meroe, the ancient 
capital of Ethiopia. It has been supposed by some 
that Egypt itself was colonized from Ethiopia; and it 
is certain that the latter was at a very early period 
characterized by order, civilization, and strength. He- 
rodotus tells us that Ethiopia was never conquered by 
a foreign power, and yet we know that as early as 
the twelfth dynasty, at least two thousand years be- 
fore our era, the Ethiopians were reckoned among the 
most formidable enemies of Egypt. Their power must 
have remained unbroken, therefore, for many centuries. 
About 711 B.C. they became masters of Egypt under 
their king Sabacon, the So of Scripture, by whom and 



CONDITION OF ALL SURROUNDING COUNTRIES. 67 

his successors it was held for more than fifty years. 
Cambyses, incited by the ambition to extend his con- 
quests farther than had been done by any who had 
gone before him, resolved upon the subjugation of 
Ethiopia. He sent ambassadors into the country with 
presents, whose real mission was to act as spies. The 
king, reading the purpose which lay bexieath the show 
of respect and friendship, bade the ambassadors carry 
back his bow, with the message that when their master 
could bend it as easily as he himself could he might 
begin the war. Cambyses was filled with rage. He 
invaded the country, but, in attempting to lead his army 
by a shorter route across the desert, he was com- 
pelled, after his troops had endured the most terrible 
sufferings, to make an ignominious retreat. 

To such inroads Ethiopia was frequently subjected, 
but it was never annexed to Egypt. It was never con- 
quered even by the Romans, and it was still formidable 
in the time of Diocletian, at the close of the third cen- 
tury. He persuaded the Noubas to remove from the 
deserts of Libya, and to occupy a district on the fron- 
tier of Egypt, extending seven days march towards 
Ethiopia. They held this territory on the condition of 
their protecting the empire from the inroads of the Blem- 
myes and the Ethiopians. "The treaty/' says Gibbon, 
"long subsisted ; and till the establishment of Christian- 
ity introduced stricter notions of religious worship, it 
was annually ratified by a solemn sacrifice in the isle 
of Elephantine, in which the Romans, as well as the 
barbarians, adored the same visible or invisible powers 
of the universe. " This kingdom was afterwards greatly 
extended, and its capital was fixed as far south as 
Dongola. When the Arabs entered Egypt in 638, 
they found the Noubas a strong Christian kingdom. 
It retained its independence till the thirteenth century. 
But the repeated inroads of the Mohammedans sapped 
the foundations of its strength. The formerly strong 
government was overthrown, and the country was 



68 EGYPT. 

broken up into various small states. The Mohamme- 
dans poured in, and Christianity was gradually ex- 
tinguished from the south of Egypt to the borders of 
Abyssinia. This country also is a desolation. Its 
empire and its strength are gone. The sites of its 
ancient cities are matter of conjecture. The conquest 
of the country by the Egyptian government was 
as fruitless in wealth as it was in glory. The eye 
seeks in vain for any present token of greatness or 
prosperity. That it once was great its ruins and the 
page of history alone declare. But it was simply im- 
possible that its desolation could have been foreseen by 
man even seven centuries after the beginning of the 
Christian era. 

Of the countries to the east of Egypt we need say 
nothing now. These prophecy has singled out by name, 
and their condition and story will come before us again. 
It is enough to say that desolation has fallen upon 
them all ; a desolation which, though predicted from 
of old, yet lingered long before it fell, and which, even 
at the beginning of our era, could not have been re- 
garded as even probable. 

7. EGYPT HERSELF WAS TO SHARE IN THE GENERAL 

DECAY. 

Her kingdom was to continue, but her fulness and 
might were to pass away. "They shall be desolate 
among the countries that are desolate." Contrast the 
Egypt of to-day with the Egypt of the Roman con- 
quest ; compare the luxury and magnificence of the one 
with the meanness and wretchedness of the other, and 
no further proof will be required that she has shared 
the fate of her sister countries. The doom has fallen 
upon her fertile fields, as well as upon her civilization 
and her cities. The total area of Egypt was ascer- 
tained, by the French survey in 1798, to be 115,200 
square miles. Only 9,582, "including the Nile bed and 



THE DESOLATION OF EGYPT. 69 

the islands within it,"* were watered by the river, and 
fit, therefore, for cultivation. Under recent improve- 
ments the land capable of being tilled amounts to 11,351 
square miles, less than a tenth of the entire surface of 
the country. But all is not told when this is said. 
More than a third of this, though irrigated, is not tilled, 
and the land at present under cultivation is only about 
one-sixteenth of the whole area of the country. 

The desolation is not proved by statistics alone. It 
is painfully obvious. Sir Gardner Wilkinson says: 
"The plain of San" (the ancient Zoan) "is very ex- 
tensive, but thinly inhabited; no village exists in the 
immediate vicinity of ancient Tanis ; and when looking 
from the mounds of this once splendid city towards the 
distant palms of indistinct villages, we cannot fail to be 
struck by the desolation spread around it. The 'field 
of Zoan' is now a barren waste : a canal passes through 
it without being able to fertilize the soil."f Speaking 
of the Fyoom, a district above Cairo, on the other side 
of the Nile, he says the mounds of towns "occur in 
many parts of the Fyoom ; and though we cannot cred- 
it the tradition of the people that it formerly contained 
366 towns and villages, it is evident that it was a popu- 
lous nome of Ancient Egypt, and that many once 
existed both in the centre and on the now barren skirts 
of the Fyoom. Indeed, the cultivated land extended 
far beyond its present limits : a great portion of the 
desert plain was then taken into cultivation, and I have 
seen several places where canals and the traces of 
cultivated fields are still discernible to a considerable 
distance east and west of the modern irrigated lands. "% 

But the special feature in the desolation of Egypt, 
and that which was to make her continuance consistent 
with her decay, was this: "Her cities shall be in the 
midst of the cities that are wasted." No words can 

* Egypt as It Is, p. 19. 
t Murray's Handbook of Egypt, p. 234. $ Ibid. p. 256. 



JO EGYPT. 

more graphically set before us Egypt as it is. She is 
indeed "the land of ruins ;" she is one vast burial-place 
of the art and magnificence of the past, and her present 
homes are, as it were, dwellings among the tombs. She 
cannot be said to have preserved one ancient city. "The 
present town of Assouan has been built a little to the 
north of the former town of Saracenic origin, the ruins 
of which are seen above it, and which was itself built 
upon the ruins of the Roman city. The whole town is 
encompassed with vestiges of buildings. " Alexandria 
cannot be reckoned among the ancient cities of Egypt. 
It was unknown to the Pharaohs. But the city of 
Alexander, of the Ptolemies, of the Romans, of the 
lower empire, even of the Arab conquest, will now be 
sought in vain. "The site of the ancient city, which is 
to the south of the present town, presents an immense 
field of confused ruins; over a space of from six to 
seven miles in circuit is spread an assemblage of broken 
columns, obelisks, and shapeless masses of architecture, 
rising frequently to a greater height than the surround- 
ing houses. Here, amid the heaps of rubbish, are seen 
some churches, mosques, and monasteries, and three 
small clusters of dwellings, formerly three towns. 
Traces are discernible of ancient streets in straight 
lines, and some ruins of colonnades mark the sites of 
palaces."* These ruins have been still further "wast- 
ed." "Little now remains," says Wilkinson, "of the 
splendid edifices of Alexandria; and the few columns 
and traces of walls which a few years ago rose above 
the mounds, are now no longer seen." 

Even the Damietta of the crusades, the ancient Tam- 
iathis, has passed away. In 1249 it was taken by 
the Christians, and surrendered soon after. In 1250 it 
was destroyed by the Mohammedans themselves, be- 
cause of its exposed position, and a new Damietta was 
built five and a half miles farther south. Nor is it only 

* Modern Traveller (published 1827), Vol. I, pp. 189, 190. 



ITS CITIES THAT ARE WASTED. J I 

in the wasting of its ancient cities that the fulfilment 
of the prediction is seen. Geezeh was a favourite 
summer resort of the Memlooks and the inhabitants of 
Cairo. "It is now a mere village, with a few cafes, 
ruined bazaars, and the wrecks of houses .... 
Leo Africanus" (writing about the beginning of the 
sixteenth century) "calls it a city, beautified by the 
palaces of the Memlooks, who there sought retirement 
from the bustle of Cairo, and frequented by numerous 
merchants and artisans. ... The mosks and beauti- 
ful buildings at the river side are no longer to be seen 
at Geezeh; and the traveller, as he leaves his boat, 
wanders amidst uneven heaps of rubbish, and the ill- 
defined limits of potters' yards, till he issues from a 
breach in the crumbling Memlock walls into the open 
plain."* One more instance may suffice. "Rosetta has 
always been considered the most agreeable and the 
prettiest town of Egypt, celebrated for its gardens, 
and looked upon by the Cairenes, as well as Alexan- 
drians, as a most delightful retreat during summer. 
It has still its gardens, which surround it on three 
sides, and the advantages of situation; but it has lost 
much of its importance as a town, and has ceased to be 
the resort of strangers. The population, too, is so 
much diminished that a great proportion of its houses 
are completely deserted and falling, if not already 
fallen, into ruins."f 

There is no sign, therefore, that, though the ancient 
ruins were wholly swept away, the cities of Egypt 
should not still be among the cities that are wasted. 
This burden of decay Egypt has never thrown aside. 
It cannot remove it now, and beneath it its cities are 
crumbling still. And no words can give us a truer 
and more vivid picture of its desolation than is given 
in this brief but clear utterance of prophecy: "Her 
cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are wasted." 

* Murray's Handbook of Egypt, p. 173. f Ibid, p. 104. 



J2 EGYPT. 

The traveller cannot turn in any direction without en- 
countering mounds of ruins which mark the sites of 
ancient cities, more or less "wasted." Like sheaves 
on the harvest-field they lie thickly strewn over the 
whole country ; and its attraction and wonder are not 
the Egypt of the present, but what is still found in 
these heaps of the Egypt of the past. 

8. Let us now glance at what is said of the possess- 
ors of Egypt. 

THE CHARACTER OF ITS MASTERS 

is first of all described in one clear, emphatic word : "I 
will sell the land into the hand of the wicked'' (Ezek. 
xxx. 12). It may be noticed in passing that the phrase, 
"I will sell the land," denotes, in the language of Scrip- 
ture, its unresisting surrender into the hand of an 
enemy. As slaves are sold into the hand of a master, 
so will they be sold into the hand of "the wicked." The 
dominion foreshadowed is one of irresponsible un- 
scrupulousness and ferocity. The slave has no rights, 
and the wicked has no mercy. It is strange to find that 
almost the very words of the prophecy have been un- 
consciously repeated by those who have weighed the 
condition of this unhappy country. Volney, for example, 
calls it "the country oi slavery and tyranny/' and Malte 
Brun speaks of "the arbitrary sway of the ruffian 
masters of Egypt." Of AH Bey (who reigned from 
1766 to 1772) it has been said: "Like his predecessors, 
he considered Egypt as his private property or life 
estate, and the natives as the live-stock disposable at his 
pleasure?'* De Leon says of Abbas Pasha that he 
"was arbitrary, rapacious, and cruel to the last degree." 
To show fully how strikingly these words, "I will sell 
the land into the hand of the wicked" have been ful- 
filled, we should have to write the history of Egypt. 
The sum of its story in every period throughout all its 

* Modem Traveller — Egypt, I., p. 138. 



THE CHARACTER OF ITS MASTERS. *JZ 

changes, from the prophet's time to the present, is 
rightly told in those words alone — the land has been 
sold into the hand of the wicked. We name a few 
facts. The first governor of Egypt under the Roman 
Empire, Cornelius Gallus, was guilty of such extortion 
and oppression that he was disgraced, and died by his 
own hand. A revolt was crushed by Diocletian in 286 
with remorseless severity. Alexandria surrendered at 
discretion, but was shown no mercy. "Many thou- 
sands of the citizens perished in a promiscuous slaugh- 
ter; and there were few obnoxious persons in Egypt 
who escaped a sentence of death, or at least of exile. 
The fate of Busiris and Coptos was still more melan- 
choly than that of Alexandria. Those proud cities, 
the former distinguished by its antiquity, the latter 
enriched by the passage of the Indian trade, were 
utterly destroyed by the arms and by the severe order 
of Diocletian."* The oppression of the Greek Empire 
became so intolerable to the Egyptians that the Arabs, 
burning though they were with the first fervour of 
their fierce and intolerant fanaticism, were everywhere 
hailed by them as deliverers. For a short time it 
seemed as if a change had been made for the better. 
But it was impossible that the Christianity of Egypt 
and the Mohammedanism of its new lords could long 
share the same land in peace. The Egyptians, per- 
secuted and oppressed, rose in insurrection, and were 
subdued with immense bloodshed. The persecution 
was continued with circumstances of grosser outrage. 
A special tax was imposed upon the monks, and as 
each one paid the tax he was branded upon the hand. 
Any monk, who was afterwards unable to show this 
barbarous tax-receipt, had his hand cut off. Subse- 
quently, every Copt had his hand similarly branded ; 
and the whole community was so oppressed that another 
rebellion was the result, which, like the former, was 

* Gibbon. 



74 EGYPT. l1 ' '" 

crushed and followed by another terrible persecution. 
The Copts were compelled to wear a distinguishing 
dress, and their proud spirits were borne down under 
other marks of shame. About the end of the tenth 
century they were made to wear, suspended from their 
necks, a wooden cross of five pounds weight, and to 
go clothed in deep black, a colour peculiarly odious to 
the Egyptian Mohammedans. In the beginning of the 
fourteenth century they were so overwhelmed by Mos- 
lem hatred that multitudes of them, wearied of a hope- 
less struggle, embraced Mohammedanism. The small 
remnant who still clung to Christianity, though now 
less oppressed, pay a heavier tribute than is imposed 
upon their Mohammedan countrymen. 

But those who apostatized did not escape from their 
evil destiny by the simple expedient of changing their 
religion. They form by far the largest portion of the 
fellaheen, the cultivators of the soil, and these "the 
hand of the wicked" has long held in its savage grip. 
"How is agriculture to improve," Miss Martineau asks, 
"under such arrangements as the following? — The 
cultivator undertakes to till a certain quantity of land, 
all the land, it is understood, being the Pasha's prop- 
erty, except such as he pensions or gratifies certain 
parties with. The cultivator engages, in return for 
being furnished with all that is needed for its cultiva- 
tion, to hand over a certain amount (in proportion to 
the produce) after harvest. He receives, among other 
requisites, an order for a good and sufficient quantity 
of seed-corn from the government granary. When 
he presents the order, the great official gentleman at 
the granary directs a subordinate officer to supply the 
applicant with three-quarters of the specified quantity, 
he retaining the other quarter for his own fee. The 
second officer subtracts a second quarter; and the 
cultivator sows his field with half the proper seed !" 

Wilkinson found, as the result of a careful calcula- 
tion, that, in the most favourable circumstances, the 



THE CHARACTER OF ITS MASTERS. 75 

peasant had only two and two-fifths farthings a day 
on which to support himself and his family.* The 
consequence is that, to keep themselves from actual 
starvation, the peasants have to convey grain secretly 
from the fields to their houses, and have thus, while 
labouring with their hands most diligently, to secure 
their bread by theft. It is impossible to extort the 
enormous taxes which the poor fellaheen have to pay 
without the torture of the bastinado, or what an apolo- 
gist for the government of Ismail Pasha gaily calls 
"stick logic."f But it is not government oppression 
alone which shows how terribly true are the words, 
"the hand of the wicked," as a description of the power 
which holds this unhappy country. The land groans 
under the ravages of a whole army of plunderers. 
"Every Verres is enriched by the spoliation of the 
peasant, from the Mahmour to the Mukuddem, or 
beadle, of the lowest governor/'J Lane says, "It 
would be scarcely possible for them" (the peasants) 
"to suffer more and live."§ 

We know how unenviable is the condition of the 
Christian peasant under Turkish rule. But, comparing 
him with the fellah of Egypt, Sir George Campbell 
says : "If the Bulgarian were content to be a political 
slave and to submit to occasional outrage, he might 
have been in many respects tolerably well to do. Far 
otherwise is the lot of the Egyptian fellah. . . . The 
taxation is enormously higher ; the methods of squeez- 
ing more severe; the personal treatment more uni- 
formly degrading; the bastinado and the corvee are 
in full force. If a man has anything he dare not show 
it, and the very beginnings of material improvement 
are thus cut off to the fellah." The Right Honourable 
S. Cave, who was sent out by our Government to in- 

* Modem Egypt and Thebes, Vol. I., p. 468. 

t M'Coan, Egypt as It Is, p. 26. 
t Modern Egypt and Thebes, Vol. I., p. 469. 

§ Modern Egyptians, Vol. I., 178. 



j6 EGYPT. 

quire into the Egyptian finances, endeavours in his re- 
port, presented in 1876, to account for the corruption 
which pervades the whole administration. "From the 
pashas downwards/' he says, "every office is a tenancy 
at will ; and experience shows that, while dishonesty 
goes wholly or partially unpunished, independence of 
thought and action, resolution to do one's duty and to 
resist the peculation and neglect which pervade every 
department, give rise to intrigues which, sooner or 
later, bring about the downfall of honest officials." 

Volumes might be written on the text, "I will sell 
the land into the hand of the wicked." The terrible 
impress of that hand is visible everywhere. The hor- 
rors of the conscription, to escape which parents sys- 
tematically mutilate their children, and of the corvees, 
or forced labour levies (in which the peasants are 
driven in herds from their fields, no matter though the 
harvest is wasted on which their own and their fami- 
lies' bread depends, and guarded by the military like 
convicts till their enforced task is done), are well 
known. The following words may give us some con- 
ception of what these things mean for the people. 
"This afternoon," writes Lord Haddo, "we witnessed 
a distressing scene. Some men had been forcibly im- 
pressed at a village, and were lying bound in the boats 
which were to convey them to Cairo, and which, the 
wind being contrary, were slowly hauled along the 
shore, while the wives and mothers of the men from 
whom they were thus separated for life, followed howl- 
ing and shrieking for many miles." Attentions were 
paid to him as the eldest son of the Premier of Eng- 
land (Lord Aberdeen), and he says: "The worst of it 
is, that the sheikh of each village is ordered to come 
down to the water with fifty men to haul the boat in 
case the wind should fail ; and the violence, and even 
cruelty, with which the unfortunate fellahs are driven 
from their fields with the sticks and whips of the 
cavasses, interferes with my enjoyment." 



THE CHARACTER OF ITS MASTERS. JJ 

Mehemet Ali, in one of his instructions to the provin- 
cial governors, said of his conscripts: "Some draw 
their teeth, some put out their eyes, and others break 
their arms, or otherwise maim themselves. " And in 
order to put a stop to the practice, largely indulged 
in by Egyptian mothers, of putting out one of the eyes 
of their male children to save them from the conscrip- 
tion, he formed a one-eyed regiment for garrison duty. 
Were any consideration or care shown for the soldiers, 
military service could not possibly be the terror it is 
to the fellaheen. But the tender mercies of the wicked 
are cruel. The spirit in which the people are treated 
may be understood from the following extracts from 
the work of Mir. Villiers Stuart, which is in substance 
a government report, and which we may therefore ac- 
cept as written calmly and after due investigation. He 
found 40,000 men making a canal in Upper Egypt to 
irrigate the lands of some rich Pashas. No food was 
supplied to them, nor was sleeping or other accom- 
modation provided, nor tools with which to do the 
work of excavation. They worked from sunrise to 
sunset, with no intermission save the few moments 
during which they rushed down to the river to soak 
the hard bread, their only food, which their friends 
had sent from their distant homes. The great majority 
of them had to tear up the soil and stones and to 
fill their baskets with their hands. He adds : "Ophthal- 
mia is one evil that results ; I cannot imagine a better 
receipt for the wholesale manufacture of this malady 
than to work men to exhaustion in fiery heat, glare, 
and dust all day, and then to expose them at night to 
the heavy dew and frosty temperature, with the bare 
ground for their couch, and their calico rags for their 
only covering."* 

"Forced labour in the factories has been abolished 
An paper, but in Upper Egypt it is still in full swing. "t 

* Egypt After the War, p. 288. t Ibid., p. 319. 



78 EGYPT. 

There the fellahs are subjected to the hardest slavery. 
Guards are placed at the doors who prevent all egress 
and the labourers are kept in the building day and 
night, being compelled to sleep on the stone floor and 
amid the noise of the machinery. "In 1879 we were 
witnesses of the following incident at one of the sugar 
factories. While we were there there was a sudden 
commotion, and we found that one of the men had 
fallen from a gallery and was mortally injured; he was 
carried out in a dying state. On emerging we inquired 
for him, and were shocked to find him lying in the sun 
and covered with flies — left there to die like a dog. 
No man had had the charity to moisten his lips or to 
carry him into the shade, or to fan the flies away, or 
to alleviate his sufferings in any way."* 

On some of the corvees, not only are able-bodied 
men compelled to toil, but even "small children, boys 
and girls as young as seven or eight years," who are 
kept "walking all day up and down the banks with 
their baskets of earth. "f As showing further the char- 
acter of those into whose hands Egypt has been sold 
we may note that under the present dynasty, which has 
been lauded as having done so much for the country, 
the wretched fellaheen have been subjected to repeated 
acts of spoliation. At Thebes the Government took 
part of the land arbitrarily at £7 an acre, and relet it 
at more than a third of that sum annually. The con- 
sequence has been that the people there have been 
plunged into poverty. Some of them have rented por- 
tions from the Government, but "it too often happens 
that after digging and sowing the land they in the 
end get no reward but a beating.":): We have heard 
much in connection with the debt of the Daira lands 
— the property of the state, and the private property 
of the late Khedive. They are simply the fruit of the 

* Ibid., pp. 319, 320. f De Leon, The Khedive's Egypt, p. 214. 
% Egypt After the War, p. 306. 



THE CHARACTER OF ITS MASTERS. 79 

most unblushing and unscrupulous robbery. "Both of 
them/' says Mr. Villiers Stuart, "represent an enor- 
mous amount of injustice, tyranny, and oppression."* 

"Like master, like man/' The example of those in 
high places has been only too closely followed by their 
subordinates. "During this portion of my tour," 
says Mr. Stuart, "I happened to be witness of an inci- 
dent which is highly instructive, and serves as a typi- 
cal instance of the behaviour of the subordinate officials 
towards the rank and file of the people. As I passed, 
a gang of men in chains, probably for non-payment of 
taxes, were drawn up in front of the Post Office. One 
of these presented a docket to the postmaster. He 
answered roughly, 'You have had your letter.' At 
the same time he tore up the docket and threw it out 
of the window. I took up the torn pieces and found 
that they were a warrant for the delivery of a registered 
letter. I asked the postmaster how it came that if the 
man had received his letter he had been allowed to re- 
tain the voucher. The postmaster, seeing that I was 
disposed not to let the matter drop, now changed his 
tone and said to the claimant, Tf you will get two re- 
spectable townspeople to certify your identity, you 
shall have your letter/ It appeared, therefore, that his 
first assertion that the man had received his letter was 
a positive falsehood. This incident furnishes one more 
illustration of how corrupt and dishonest the official 
classes are, from the highest to the lowest."t 

Even the courts of justice, where the oppressed 
might plead their cause, are simply additional instru- 
ments of extortion and wrong. "It is bad enough in 
any country to be occupied in lawsuits; but nowhere 
does a poor man find so much difficulty in obtaining 
justice as in Egypt. He is not only put ofif from day to 
day, but obliged to run from one person to another, to 
no purpose, for days, weeks, or months; and unless 

* Ibid., p. 306. f Ibid., p. 262. 



80 EGYPT. 

he can manage to collect sufficient to bribe the bash- 
kateb and other employes of the court, he may hope in 
vain to obtain justice, or even attention to his com- 
plaints."* The spirit of high-handed and cruel mas- 
tery marks the procedure of all the tribunals. "Crim- 
inal cases are dealt with by the Mahmours and Mudirs 
in despotic and arbitrary fashion ; the use of the 'cour- 
bash T (hippopotamus-hide whip) and of the stick has 
increased since the rebellion, as also imprisonment in 
heavy chains. These punishments often fall upon the 
innocent ; for instance, if a fellah, selected for military 
service, runs away to the desert, his relatives are 
chained and thrown into prison, although in no way 
accessory to the offence."t 

"How is justice," Mr. Villiers Stuart asks an in- 
telligent farmer, "administered in your district? It is 
all by bribery; a poor man has no chance. If he is 
wronged, if it is a small debt, or if he has been mal- 
treated, or beaten, or robbed, there is a small local 
tribunal; the constable of the village reports the case 
to the Mahmour, who if he deems it sufficiently im- 
portant reports it to the Mudir. If it is a land dis- 
pute, e. g. y about boundaries or successions, it goes 
to Tantah ; three or four years, or five years may elapse 
before it is settled. If he has a buffalo or a cow, he 
must sell it to make presents for chief clerks and their 
subordinates and even high officials. He is soon 
ruined. In other cases which are reported to the 
Mahmour, and by the Mahmour to the Mudir, the 
man who can afford to bribe the highest gets the most 
favourable reports."$ 

This corruption taints the entire official body. The 
Mudirs and Mahmours are removed with every change 
of ministry. And hence "they only try," says Mr. 

* Wilkinson; Murray's Handbook of Egypt, p. 156. 
t Egypt After the War, p. 158. X Ibid., pp. 21, 22. 



THE CHARACTER OF ITS MASTERS. 8l 

Stuart, "to make the most of their opportunity and to 
enrich themselves as fast as they can during their 
precarious term of office. I have known Egypt for 
many years, ana I fear I must come to the conclu- 
sion that venality and corruption are so universal, so 
ingrained in the social fabric, from the highest to the 
lowest" that he believes the only hope of Egypt lies 
in having an entirely new set of officials, and English- 
men if possible.* Nor is this all. "Egyptian prisons 
are Bastilles in which men in power immure arbitrarily 
those who have offended them, or whom they have 
any motive in getting out of the way. They are sent 
there without trial or enquiry under letters de cachet; 
and there they may remain for years, forgotten perhaps 
by the tyrant who sent them thither, and without 
means or opportunity of bringing their case to the 
notice of those who might obtain tardy justice and 
release for them."t 

The masters of Egypt have been increased within 
our own times. We know what the bondholders are, 
and whether the terms on which the loans were ad- 
vanced, or the demands which are to-day insisted upon, 
deserve the epithet which the Scripture has applied to 
the other lords of this unhappy people. But the land has 
been of late years covered with a flood of usurers, and 
between them and the bondholders the very heart's 
blood of the people is being wrung out. The debt of 
the fellahs is estimated to amount to two-thirds of 
the national debt, "and upon this vast sum interest, 
varying from 3 to 5, 8 and even 10 per cent, per 
month is either paid or is accumulating, and increasing 
the indebtedness at an alarming rate." The fellahs, 
unable to meet their debts, are being deprived of their 
land. "A rapid process of transfer is taking place of 
the propertv, i. e., the land, of the native Egyptians to 
Greeks, and Syrians, and other Christian ( !) usurers."t 

* Ibid., pp. 158, 159. t Ibid., p. 42. t Ibid., pp. 39, 41. 



82 EGYPT. . 

These usurers are as unscrupulous as the rest into 
whose hands this people have been sold, and we, as a 
nation, have unfortunately and unwittingly played into 
the usurers' hands. It was the custom of Egypt that 
no land could be seized for debt, and this was one 
excuse for the exorbitant interest, sometimes amount- 
ing to 130 per cent, per annum. But we have been 
accessory to the change which removed this last barrier 
which stood between the fellahs and spoliation. "We 
have converted these ill-secured debts into first-class 
land mortgages. Arabi drove out these pauperizers of 
the people, but we have brought them back by force 
of arms/'* 

Mr. Stuart thus describes the palaces of these Egyp- 
tian Shylocks. "Just outside many of the Delta vil- 
lages may be observed a superior house built in Euro- 
pean style : the walls stained cream color, or pale blue, 
or rose pink, with bright green Venetian blinds; a 
great improvement on the raw mud-brick structures 
which form the staple of native dwellings. These 
e3ifices will always be found on enquiry to belong to 
the local money-lender — Greek, Syrian, Armenian, or 
Jewish. He is sure to plant himself wherever the 
soil is extra fertile, and the neighbourhood extra ad- 
vantageous."! He visited one, and found it "fitted up 
with European furniture and French mirrors/' "Every- 
thing around betokened prosperity and abundance. 
. . . There could scarcely be a more striking con- 
trast than the condition presented by the neighbouring 
village." The villagers informed him that all the 
usurer's lands had belonged to them. He adds, "It 
had now come to this that while the foreign usurer had 
become a wealthy landed proprietor, not one of the 
natives had more than a dozen acres left. ... I 
took a sad and sympathetic leave of the poor fellows : 
decidedly that was not a flourishing community. That 

* Ibid., p. 60. t Ibid., p. 54- 



THE CHARACTER OF ITS MASTERS. 83 

Christian establishment close by was sucking out their 
very life-blood, like a tumour or a wen, which draws 
to itself the juices of the whole body until all is ex- 
hausted. The time could not be far off when every 
peasant proprietor there will be reduced to the position 
of a labourer on the Greek's all-devouring estate. The 
process of adding house to house and field to field 
. . . has been brought into vigorous life in Egypt 
of late years by the operation of the International 
Tribunals. No feature of the social condition of the 
Delta forced itself more prominently on my notice 
throughout my tour of inquiry in its provinces, than 
this question of the indebtedness of the fellahs in con- 
nection with the new tribunals ; and I may as well take 
this opportunity of summing up the conclusions it 
forced upon me. 

"All the witnesses agreed that the usurers — Greek, 
Syrian, and Jewish — have been the main cause of the 
hatred with which the Christians were regarded dur- 
ing the rebellion of Arabi ; that they have dealt most 
mercilessly with the fellahs, entangling them in a 
hopeless net of indebtedness, and using their power 
to possess themselves of their lands. . . . They 
have woven round them a tangled network of debt 
which no Colenso could unravel — the moderate sum 
originally advanced, compound interest at exorbitant 
rates, sums advanced successively since, with their 
interests, the reckoning further complicated by sums 
paid on account, no receipts being given. The fellahs 
have long ago abandoned in despair the task of com- 
prehending their financial position, with its hopeless 
intricacies, and only feel that they have nothing which 
they can call their own."* 

Everywhere there is the same unscrupulous rapacity, 
the same disregard of right and justice, which show 
how marvellous are these words, "I will sell the land 

* Ibid, pp. 55-57- 



84 EGYPT. 

into the hands of the wicked." Take them simply as a 
description. Are there any other words that can so 
clearly mirror the condition of this unhappy land, and 
that will state it with such brevity yet fullness, with 
such deep insight and pathos? As a description it is 
marvellous ; but what shall we say of it as a prophecy ? 
But not only is the character of the masters of Egypt 
foretold ; 

9. THEIR NATIONALITY 

is also strictly defined ; "I will make the land waste and 
all that is therein, by the hand of 

STRANGERS." 

(Ezek. xxx. 12). It might be supposed that this is 
merely a re-statement of the prediction which declared 
that there should no more be a native prince upon the 
throne of Egypt. But it really carries us farther. The 
latter prophecy would have been fulfilled had one race 
— the Persians, or the Greeks, for example — continued 
age after age to lord it over Egypt. It is intimated now, 
however, that the Egyptians will know the mastery of 
more than one people. The inheritance will pass from 
race to race who, all of them, will stand in this rela- 
tionship of strangers to the people over whom they 
exercise their cruel mastery. We have only to call 
to mind the well-known antipathy of the Egyptians 
to foreigners, the contempt in which they held them, 
and their treatment of their captives in compelling 
them to toil under the lash of the taskmaster upon 
their public works, to see the fitness of the doom. 
They boasted that upon their mighty monuments no 
Egyptian had laboured ; and now it is foretold that by 
the hand of races, such as they had loathed and de- 
spised and enslaved, they themselves will be judged 
for their cruelty and pride. 

When we turn from the prophecy which says who 
Egypt's masters will be, and ask of history who they 



THE NATIONALITY OF ITS MASTERS. 85 

have been, we are answered in the very words of Scrip- 
ture. They have been strangers. The Persians were 
succeeded by the Macedonians, these by the Romans, 
and latterly by the Greeks of the Eastern Empire. The 
Empire fell, in Egypt and the East, before the Arabian 
Caliphs. "About the year 887, the power of the caliphs 
was succeeded by the reign of the Turcomans, their 
own janizaries, whom they had called to their aid. 
The dynasties of the Tolonides, the Fatimites, and the 
Aioobites, ruled over Egypt till the year 1250. The 
Mamelukes, or military slaves of the Turcoman sultans 
of Egypt, then massacred their masters and took pos- 
session of the sovereignty. The Turkish dynasty, or 
that of the Bassarite Mamelukes, reigned till 1382. 
The Circassian race, or that of the Bordjite Mamelukes, 
ruled here till within these very few years. ... In 
1798 the French abolished the Mameluke aristocracy, 
and made themselves masters of the whole of Egypt."* 
After two short years the French retired, when the 
Mamelukes strove for the sovereignty with the Turks 
of Constantinople by intrigue and assassination. Me- 
hemet Ali foiled both with their own weapons and 
founded the present dynasty. An Albanian Turk and 
a soldier of fortune, he entered Egypt in command of 
300 men, sent from his native town to assist in ex- 
pelling the French from Egypt, and, step by step, 
through wiles and blood, he fought his way to the 
throne. And not only is it true that foreigners have 
filled the throne, they have held almost every office 
of emolument and trust. Mehemet Ali among his 
many reforms attempted to change this practice. He 
appointed native governors "with the very liberal in- 
tention of allowing the peasants to be ruled by their 
compatriots, instead of the more humiliating custom 
of subjecting them to foreigners. "f The change had 
continued for only five years, when it was "found 

* Malte Brun. t Wilkinson. 



86 ~ EGYPT. 

necessary to return to the old system ;" and to-day it 
is as true as ever that the country is in the hands of 
"strangers." 

The last point we name is 

10. THE WORK OF EGYPT'S MASTERS. 

"I will make the land waste and all that is therein by 
the hands of strangers" (Ezek. xxx. 12). The desola- 
tion, which we have already seen was to fall, might 
have come in many ways. It might have sprung from 
causes over which man had no control, and it might 
have fallen in spite of the best efforts of the foreign 
successors of the Pharaohs. But here the story of the 
desolation is fully told. It will be the result of long 
and increasing oppression. It will not happen in spite 
of the efforts of these strangers: it is the work for 
which they are to come, and, when they have passed 
away, this will remain as the token that they have 
been. Egypt's native rulers were remembered by the 
advancement of their country's weal, and by public 
works and monuments which filled the breast of pos- 
terity with a noble pride and emulation: but the me- 
morial of these masters will be waste and deepening 
desolation. 

Has the work been done ? Is the desolation of Egypt 
distinctly traceable to the strangers? From every side 
witnesses arise which testify to the truth of the pre- 
diction. The strangers have wasted the land. I have 
already referred to the neglect of the canals. The 
revenues which ought to have been, and which 
would have been but for the most unprincipled voracity, 
applied to their maintenance have been withheld, and 
what might have been fruitful fields have become a 
desert. What has been already said of the steadily 
deepening desolation of Egypt has been shown to be 
the work of its foreign masters. And other strangers 
than its masters have aided in the work of destruction. 
In 1 801 the English, in order to protect their camp 



THE WORK OF ITS MASTERS. 87 

from an attack by the French, cut through the em- 
bankment between the Bay of Aboukir and the basin 
of the former Lake Mareotis, and the salt waters now 
roll over forty villages and the cultivated lands which 
surrounded them. 

The people have been wasted. Clot Bey, writing in 
1840, calculates that one-half the population has per- 
ished since the time of the Persian conquest. There 
is no reason whatever, save the continued oppression 
of the people, why the population should not even now 
spread out to its ancient dimensions. Were all the land 
cultivated, which can still be sown, the produce would 
be sufficient to maintain, a population of 8,000,000 — 
about twice the number of the present inhabitants. 
The people do not perish, therefore, for lack of room ; 
their decrease is not simply the consequence of the 
lands being wasted. It is wrought by the hand of the 
strangers. The villages are depopulated first of all 
by the conscription. Lane calculated that, under Me- 
hemet Ali, every second man out of the whole num- 
ber fit for military service was taken for the army 
and navy; and M'Coan admits that the conscription 
is still out of all proportion to the military necessities 
of the country, and a serious hindrance to the progress 
of agriculture. Another cause of the decrease is the 
corvee — compulsory labour upon public works, and 
on the estates of the Khedive and others whose de- 
mands the poor fellaheen can neither resist nor gain- 
say. Some notion of what this means for the peasant 
may be gained from the story of the Mahmoudieh 
canal, as told by Mr. Stuart. "The important water- 
way between the Nile and Egypt's greatest sea-port 
has a sad history, and furnishes a terrible illustration 
of the abuses to which the corvee is liable. It was 
constructed entirely by forced labour, and the sacrifice 
of life was frightful; those who perished were buried 
in the enbankment as the work progressed. Mehemet 
Ali had commanded all the sheiks in the Delta to 



83 EGYPT. 

bring the flower of the population from their villages 
for the work of excavating a waterway from the Nile 
to Alexandria. In obedience to this call 313,000 per- 
sons were assembled along its future course, i. e., at 
the rate of 7,825 per mile. But the Government had, 
as usual with forced labour, provided neither food 
nor tools; the poor wretches had to dig out the canal 
with their fingers, and to remove the soil in baskets 
provided by themselves. As the work progressed, 
and they got below the level of Lake Mareotis the 
water oozed in, and they toiled in fetid mud. They 
were kept at the work by soldiers who lined the banks 
with bayonets fixed; they had no respite from sunrise 
to sunset, and they lay in their cotton rags on the 
banks from sunset to sunrise, half-starved, maltreated, 
with festering fingers, and fever-stricken frames. The 
tyrant's commands were urgent; in ten months his 
wishes were accomplished, and a canal, 40 miles long 
and 200 feet wide, was excavated with men's hands, 
but 23,000 of the poor wretches perished in that time 
from exhaustion and the cruelty of their taskmasters, 
and were covered up in the mud of the embankments. 
If placed lengthways along its course there would be 
throughout the route but an interval of 2 yards be- 
tween the feet of one corpse and the skull of the next 
— a grim line of sentinels. 

"I once travelled by boat through the Mahmoudieh 
canal from Alexandria to Atfeh, a distance of forty 
miles, but during the entire trip I could not divest 
myself of the feeling that I was between walls into 
which the bodies of 23,000 human beings had been 
built. As I sailed along, the banks seemed to my mind 
to grow transparent, and I saw nothing but those 
miles of skeletons, awful trophies of tyranny and 
cruelty on the one hand, and of human suffering and 
misery on the other."* 

The resources of the country have been wasted. We 

* Egypt After the War, pp. 108-109. 



THE WORK OF ITS MASTERS. 89 

have seen that its skilled industries have gone. All 
attempts to revive them have failed. The wealth of 
the country has disappeared, and in its stead there 
stands a liability which it is utterly unable to dis- 
charge. Ismail Pasha found the finances burdened 
with a small debt of about three millions and a quarter. 
It soon swelled to the enormous amount of more than 
91 millions. The history of the loans reveals the 
terrible recklessness of the "strangers." None of 
them were negotiated for less than 12 per cent., and 
the railway loan with its sinking fund cost more than 
29. As much as 36 per cent, per annum has been 
paid for the renewal of bills. Out of five loans, 
amounting in nominal value to nearly 56 millions, only 
35 millions reached the Egyptian Treasury. Mr. Cave 
reports that on this amount the Egyptian Government 
had paid, by the end of 1875, in interest and sinking 
funds, nearly 30 millions, and that notwithstanding 
these huge payments nearly 47 millions — that is, 12 
millions more than the Government originally re- 
ceived — remained to be redeemed. 

If we ask how the money has been expended, we 
merely open another chapter in the story of the "waste." 
Of "the barrage," a scheme for damning up the Nile, 
which cost three millions, and which has been in 
process from the days of Mehemet Ali to our time, Mr. 
Stuart says : "Instead of traversing the stream higher 
up where it is confined within a single channel, the 
(French) engineers had chosen a site below the point 
at which the mighty flood divides, thus augmenting 
the expense of construction and ensuring heavier com- 
missions and percentages. . . . The costly structure 
is more picturesque than useful ; the foundations are 
not deep enough to withstand the enormous pressure 
of the waters when the sluices are closed, and conse- 
quently it has served to irrigate the contractors' pockets 
more than anything else."* 

* Ibid. 15. 



90 EGYPT. 

And that which is more precious than land, or skill, 
or wealth — the patriotism, the national sentiment of 
the people, has also been wasted. I place two state- 
ments together. Of the Egyptians as they entered 
upon their long ordeal of suffering Wilkinson says : — 
"Though far better pleased with the rule of the 
Macedonian kings than of the Persians, the Egyptians 
were never thoroughly satisfied to be subject to for- 
eigners. ... To the Romans they were equally 
troublesome. . . . Proud of the former greatness 
of their nation they could never get over the disgrace of 
their fallen condition; and, so strong was their bias 
towards their own institutions and ancient form of gov- 
ernment, that no foreign king, whose habits differed 
from their own, could reconcile them to his rule. For 
no people were more attached to their own country, to 
their own peculiar institutions, and to their own reputa- 
tion as a nation."* Such was the Egyptian of the Persian 
the Macedonian and even of the Roman occupation. 
With that picture compare the following of the Egypt 
of to-day. "I have not been able to discover any trace 
whatever of Nationalism. Arabi did not attempt to 
appeal to any such sentiment; it would not have been 
understood. ... I came out to Egypt sanguine 
as to the possibility of establishing representative insti- 
tutions upon a popular basis, but a careful and anxious 
inquiry into the actual state of feeling, into the political 
elements, into the fitness of the great bulk of the 
people, and as to any wish that may exist among them 
to possess them, has satisfied me that an interval of 
reformed administration must elapse before such a 
change could be either prudently or successfully car- 
ried out "t 

There is light beyond the darkness for Egypt. The 
Lord is smiting that He may heal. He has brought 
them low; He may yet bring them lower: for it 

* The Ancient Egyptians, Vol. I., p. 310. 
f Egypt After the War, pp. 298, 299. 



AN IMPORTANT QUESTION. 91 

stands written "They shall cry unto the Lord because 
of the oppressors/' But He humbles that He may 
in due time exalt them. "He shall send them a 
Saviour and a defender, and he shall deliver them. 
And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the 
Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day. . . . 
In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and 
with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth: 
for that the Lord of hosts hath blessed them saying, 
Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of 
my hands, and Israel mine inheritance" (Isaiah xix. 
20-25). 

But the point before us now is this. We have viewed 
in its length and breadth this prophetic picture of the 
Egypt of the present. We have tested it in its minute 
details. We have taken them one after another, five 
in the preceding chapter, ten in this. We have laid 
down each with the same feeling of astonishment. 
The fate of Egypt's two ancient capitals is described 
and discriminated. Thebes is to be "broken," to be 
"rent asunder." The idols of Memphis are to be de- 
stroyed, its images are to cease. And for nineteen 
centuries Thebes has continued in fragments, while 
Memphis has perished. The temples and images of 
Thebes remain; those of Memphis have disappeared. 
The earlier capital still attracts the traveller, and still 
affords a shelter to the children of the soil: the later 
capital has neither inhabitant nor memorial. And as 
it is with the capitals so it is with the country and the 
people. It was declared that from the time of the 
Babylonian conquest Egypt's story should be a story 
of decay; and from that time to the present hour the 
career of loss and degradation has continued. Not- 
withstanding all our own efforts as a nation it is not ar- 
rested even now. Egypt was still, however, to be 
preserved, to continue as a kingdom though the basest 
of the kingdoms of the earth. Her degradation was 
to be marked in another way: she was never again 



92 EGYPT. 

to have a native ruler. A blight was also to settle upon 
the land. The rivers and the canals were to be dried 
up. The papyrus reeds and the verdure of the river 
banks were to be swept away. The fisheries, one of 
the chief sources of the people's food, were to fail ; 
the industries, which were Egypt's glory and the 
fountain of her wealth, were to perish. She herself 
was to be a desolation in the midst of desolations, and 
her cities were to be in the midst of cities that are 
wasted. The instruments of her degradation and her 
misery were described. She was to be the prey of a 
rapacious, cruel, and foreign mastery. She was to 
be sold into the hand of the wicked : the land and all 
that is therein was to be made waste by strangers. 
Whose eye saw these things ? Whose word declared 
them? One prediction might have been fulfilled by 
some happy chance, and, perhaps, a second; but what 
of all these? Can the thought that their fulfilment 
is due to accident be entertained for a moment? And 
if not, whose is the Book on which this seal is set? 
Is it man's Book? Or is it His "in whose hand thy 
breath is, and whose are all thy ways" ? 



CHAPTER VI. 

IDUMEA AND THE SEA COAST OF PALESTINE. 

The seeker after certainty in religion will be 
grateful for the multiplicity, as well as for the min- 
uteness and distinctness, of Scripture prophecy. 
One or two lights in a chamber may not; entirely 
sweep away its gloom. But the remedy is simple. 
The lights have only to be multiplied and the place 
will at last be brighter than the day could make it. 
When the first of those proofs from fulfilled proph- 
ecy are read, the darkness of the heart, though 
smitten, may not be dispersed. The very mar- 
velousness of the evidence awakens suspicion. It 
seems too wonderful, it appears to give too ready 
and too full a satisfaction, to be true. The whisper 
may be heard, when the first cry of wonder has died 
away, that we are mistaking for design what is 
after all the work of chance; or that what has as- 
tonished us is an enthusiastic reading of the words 
of Scripture, which sober inspection will not con- 
firm. The best answer to all this is to show how 
wide is the field which the fulfilments of prophecy 
cover; and that the soberest investigation cannot 
be blind to the fact that the pages of Scripture are 
studded with predictions, as the heaven with' stars, 
or the earth with flowers — predictions that have 
been, and are being, slowly but surely fulfilled. The 
remedy here, too, is to multiply the lights till in the 



94 IDUMEA. 

brightening splendour no room is left for the shadow 
of doubt. 

We have already noticed the prediction regard- 
ing Egypt that it should "be desolate in the midst 
of the countries that are desolate." On the west, 
and on the south we have seen how fully the prophecy 
has been fulfilled. Let us now turn to the only other 
side on which Egypt was bounded by other lands. 
Travelling eastward from Egypt, and crossing the des- 
ert of Sinai, we come to what was the ancient Idumea, 
or Edom, the possession of the children of Esau. 
The wilderness is bounded on the east by the 
Wadi Arabah, a long and wide valley which ex- 
tends from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Akabah, 
and on the eastern side of that valley rises like a 
mighty wall the mountain range of Seir. The 
Edomites and the Israelites had sprung from the 
same stock, the one being the descendants of Esau, 
the other the children of Jacob. The latter were 
riot permitted to forget the claims of brotherhood, 
being forbidden to dispossess either the Edomites 
or the Moabites. But, from the time the Israelites 
sought a passage to the land promised to their 
fathers, till Jerusalem was laid in ashes and Judah 
was carried captive to Babylon, there was neither 
goodwill nor peace between these common descend- 
ants of Abraham. "Moses sent messengers from 
Kadesh unto the king of Edom, Thus saith thy 
brother Israel, Thou knowest all the travail that 
hath befallen us: how our fathers went down into 
Egypt, and we dwelt in Egypt a long time ; and the 
Egyptians evil entreated us, and our fathers: and 
when we cried unto the Lord, He heard our voice, 
and sent an angel, and brought us forth out of 
Egypt ; and, behold, we are in Kadesh, a city in the 
uttermost of thy border: let us pass, I pray thee, 
through thy land" (Num. xx. 14-17). 

To this appeal the only answer was a drawn 



THE SIN OF EDOM. 95 

sword. The Edomites massed their forces on their 
western frontier, and the Israelites were compelled 
to choose another way. The enmity did not end 
there. Edom watched his opportunity, and, spring- 
ing from his mountain lair, again and again drank 
blood. When Israel was weak and oppressed, it 
could always reckon that in him it had one foe 
more. "He did pursue his brother with the sword, 
and did cast of? all pity, and his anger did tear per- 
petually, and he kept his wrath for ever" (Amos i. 
n). In that last sore distress Judah had no more 
bitter and insulting foe than Edom. The Psalmist 
cries, "Remember, O Lord, against the children of 
Edom, the day of Jerusalem ; who said, Rase it, 
rase it, even to the foundation thereof" (Ps. cxxxvii* 
7). For the man who is deaf to the pleadings of 
brotherhood and of pity the Scripture has its threat- 
enings. It has also its judgments for nations. "Thus 
saith the Lord God: Behold, I am against thee, O 
mount Seir. . . . because thou hast had a per- 
petual enmity, and hast given over the children of 
Israel to the power of the sword in the time of their 
calamity, in the time of the iniquity of the end: 
therefore as I live, saith the Lord God, I will pre- 
pare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee. 
. . Thus will I* make mount Seir an astonishment 
and a desolation ; and I will cut off from it him that 
passeth through and him that returneth" (Ezek. 
xxxv. 3-7). 

In this and other predictions we are presented 
with another prophetic picture. No forecast could 
have been made whose fulfilment seemed less likely. 
When the words were penned, and for ages after- 
wards, Edom was strong and populous. The num- 
ber of ruined towns and cities show that the land 
was thickly peopled; while there are numerous indi- 
cations, both in the vestiges of ancient cultivation 
and in the present condition of the soil, that the 



9& IDUMEA. 

language of Scripture has not exaggerated its great 
fertility. "The whole of the fine plains in this quar- 
ter' 3 ' (the neighbourhood of Kerak) "are covered 
with sites of towns on every eminence or spot con- 
venient for the construction of one, and all the land 
is capable of rich cultivation: there can be little 
doubt that this country, now so deserted, once pre- 
sented a continued picture of plenty and fertility"* 
Wherever springs "are met with/' says Burckhardt, 
"vegetation readily takes place, even among barren 
sand and rocks." He speaks in warm terms of the 
superiority of the climate, of the purity of the air, 
and the refreshing breezes, and remarks that in no 
other part of Syria had he met so few invalids. 
Speaking of the plains at the foot of mount Hor 
Dean Stanley says : "Instead of the absolute naked- 
ness of the Sinaitic valleys, we found ourselves 
walking on grass sprinkled with flowers, and the 
level platforms on each side were filled with sprout- 
ing corn." f Petra, the great rock city, the Selah 
of the Scripture (2 Kings xiv. 7), and the capital of 
Edom, was a place of immense strength, and one 
of the wonders of the world. The country was en- 
riched by the gains of a large and lucrative trade. 
To Petra the caravans from the east and the south 
turned as to a common centre ; and from it the trade 
branched out again to Egypt, Palestine and Syria. 
In the time of our Lord, Idumea was still populous, 
and these prophecies were unfulfilled. Judgments 
had indeed fallen upon the land. It stood written in 
Ezekiel : "I will lay My vengeance upon Edom by the 
hand of My people Israel ; and they shall do in Edom 
according to Mine anger and according to My fury." 
The words were fulfilled in the time of the Macca- 
bees. They were conquered by Hyrcanus in 129 b. c, 
and being compelled either to adopt the Jewish religion 

* Irby and Mangles. t Syria and Palestine, p. 87. 



THE DESTRUCTION OF ITS TRADE. 97 

or to leave the country, they chose rather to part 
with their idolatry. But the sun of Edom did not 
go down at cnce in blood and darkness. Herod, an 
Idumean by descent, sat upon the throne of Israel. 
When the Roman armies were closing around Jerusa- 
lem, an Idumean army throw itself into the devoted 
city, and shared with the Jews the toils and the suf- 
ferings of that terrible siege. The prosperity of Petra, 
and of Edom generally, continued long after Zion's 
fall. From the fourth to the sixth century Petra was 
the seat of one of the three metropolitan sees of Pales- 
tine, and the names of its bishops appear from time to 
time in the records of the Councils. An Arab host 
was led by Mohammed in person against the south 
of Idumea in 630. In 636 it was conquered, along 
with the rest of Syria, by the Mohammedan forces. 
With this last notice Edom, even then fertile and 
populous, passes from the page of history for more 
than four and a half centuries. The Crusaders in- 
vaded the country in 1100, but were finally driven out 
before the end of the twelfth century. And then 
the curtain, raised as it were for a moment, fell again 
only to be drawn aside in what we may name our own 
times. 

Let us now return to the picture presented in the 
mirror of prophecy. We notice first of all that 

ITS COMMERCE WAS TO CEASE. 

"I will cut off from it him that passeth through, and 
him that returneth" (Ezek. xxxv. 7). It was famed, 
as we have seen, for its trade. Petra was the terminus, 
Strabo tells us, of one of the great commercial routes 
of Asia. It was the market of the Arabians for their 
spice and frankincense. A great fair was held in its 
neighbourhood,which on one occasion Demetrius Polior- 
cetes, incited by the value of the merchandise brought 
together for sale, attempted to surprise, but failed. 
Such was the Edom, not only of the prophet's day, 



98 IDUMEA. 

but of the first ages of the Christian era. And now 
that the curtain is lifted there is no more awful testi- 
mony to the sureness of God's word than this land 
presents. The desolation is appalling. Its commerce 
has utterly passed away. We do not know the story, 
but the great market of Petra has long since ceased to 
exist. Edom is no longer sought by those who desire 
to sell or by those who desire to buy. None go forth 
from it laden with the merchandise which once made 
its name famous in the earth. No echo of its once 
noisy traffic breaks the brooding silence of death. 
"Him that passeth through and him that returneth" 
God's hand has alike "cut off." 
Another prophecy declared that 

THE RACE OF THE EDOMITES SHOULD BECOME EXTINCT. 

"There shall not be any remaining to the house of 
Esau" (Obadiah, 18). That they were not extinct 
in the year 70 of our era we know, for they made 
common cause with their Jewish kindred in the de- 
fence of Jerusalem. They were afterwards Christian- 
ised with the Christianity characteristic of the Greek 
Empire, and which received its fitting judgment at 
the hands of the Arab hordes. With the Mohammedan 
invasion the Idumeans pass from sight, and now, when 
we search for them, they cannot be found. The doom 
has fallen; the nation is extinct; there is "none re- 
maining to the house of Esau." Dr. Wilson found 
among the Arabs a tribe (the fellahin of the Wadi 
Musa),* whom he suspected to be descendants of the 
ancient masters of the country. He learned, on in- 
quiry, that they claimed indeed to be descendants of 
the Beni-Israel, that is, of Jewish settlers or refugees ; 
but no mention was made of any connection with Esau. 
The very name has been forgotten. 

* The Lands of the Bible, I., p. 333, 



THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LAND AND PEOPLE, 99 

Then we are told that 

THEIR LAND WAS TO BE A DESOLATION. 

"Thus saith the Lord God : Behold I am against thee, 
O mount Seir, and I will stretch out Mine hand against 
thee, and I will make thee a desolation and an astonish- 
ment. I will lay thy cities waste and thou shall be 
desolate. . . . Thou shalt be desolate, O mount 
Seir, and all Edom, even all of it" (Ezek. xxxv. 3, 4, 
15). This doom too has been accomplished. Volney 
was the first to call attention to the country, recording 
the information given him by Arabs, that within 
three days' journey upwards of thirty ruined towns, 
absolutely deserted, were to be met with. It was first 
explored by Burckhardt, and since his time many trav- 
ellers have made us familiar with the wonders of Petra 
and the general aspect of Edom. Its cities are laid 
waste. Even from Petra with its rock-hewn dwell- 
ings, fit, as Miss Martineau has said, to receive a 
multitude to-day, every inhabitant has long since de- 
parted. And the entire land is now, as it has been 
for ages, a desolation. Here and there a cultiyated 
patch is seen, sown by the Bedouin; but as a solitary 
cry in its desert silence makes the awful stillness more 
deeply felt, so those few green spots oppress the heart 
with a deeper sense of the terribleness of Edom's judg- 
ment. The terraces, which of old clad the mountain 
sides with beauty and fruitfulness, are in ruins. Their 
walls lie scattered in fragments upon the ground, and 
the rains are year by year washing down the remnants 
of the soil from the rocks. The town of Maan, on the 
east of Edom, alone has escaped the general desola- 
tion. It owes its exemption to the possession of some 
springs, and to its lying upon the route of the Moham- 
medan pilgrimage to Mecca. This Maan is the The- 
man mentioned by Eusebius, and the Teman of 
Scripture. Can any one fail to be struck with the 
coincidence that it was from this point the desolation 

L OF C, 



TOO THE SEA-COAST OF PALESTINE. 

was to begin, and, as it were, overflow the entire 
land? The prophet wrote as the word of the living 
God, "I will make it desolate from Teman" (Ezek. 
xxv. 13) ; and in the end of days come like an answer- 
ing testimony these words of Burckhardt : "At present 
all this country is a desert, and Maan is the only in- 
habited place in it !" 

Edom has not yet touched its lowest depth. Not only 
is it written, "I will make thee perpetual desolations 
and thy cities shall not be inhabited" (Ezek. xxxv. 9), 
and that "from generation to generation it shall lie 
waste, none shall pass through it for ever and ever" 
(Isaiah xxxiv. 10) ; but it has also been said, "As in 
the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and the neigh- 
bour cities thereof, saith the Lord, no man shall dwell 
there, neither shall any son of man sojourn there." 
These last words are not yet fulfilled. The solitude is 
broken here and there by fellaheen in the north and by 
Arabs in the south. But her deserted capital, her 
ruined cities, her lost people, are the pledge that these 
words too will find their fulfilment, and that the time 
will surely come when no man shall dwell tllfere nor 
any son of man sojourn therein. 

Let us now pass from Idumea to the southern part 
of the sea-coast of Palestine, the ancient land of the 
Philistines. The scanty notices of this people, sup- 
plied by ancient history and the recently deciphered 
monuments of Egypt and Assyria, agree with those of 
Scripture in representing them as an enterprising and 
martial race. More than 1,200 years before the Chris- 
tian era we find them engaged in a successful war with 
the Sidonians, and about the same time they, in con- 
junction with other Mediterranean nations, attacked 
the naval forces of Egypt. Every reader of the Old 
Testament is acquainted with their persistent hostility 
towards the Israelites, a hostility which seems to have 
culminated in the hour of Israel's deepest distress, 
when her armies were defeated and dispersed, her 



THE PHILISTINES WERE TO PERISH. IOI 

strongholds taEen, and the majority of her people 
carried captive to Babylonia. When the doom was pro- 
nounced against Edom, Philistia was not forgotten. 
"Thus saith the Lord God: Because the Philistines 
have dealt by revenge, and taken vengeance with despite 
of soul to destroy it with perpetual enmity; therefore 
thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will stretch out 
mine hand upon the Philistines, and I will cut off the 
Cherethites, and destroy the remnant of the sea-coast" 
(Ezek. xxv. 15, 16) ; "Gather yourselves together, yea 
gather together O nation that hath no shame. . . . 
Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea-coast, the nation of 
the Cherethites! The word of the Lord is against 
you, O Canaan, the land of the Philistines: I will de- 
stroy thee that there shall be no inhabitant. And the 
sea-coast shall be pastures, with cottages for shep- 
herds and folds for flocks" (Zephaniah ii. 1, 5, 6). 

Let us look, then, at this other picture drawn by the 
pen of prophecy. We note first of all that upon this 
race, which like that of Esau sought to blot out Israel, 
there also rests 

THE DOOM OF EXTINCTION. 

The Cherethites were to be cut off, and even the rem- 
nant of the sea-coast was to be destroyed. In the face 
of the desolation which has descended on all these lands, 
it may seem as if there was nothing wonderful in this 
prediction. We may regard it as an inevitable feature 
in their decay that their ancient peoples should pass 
away and leave no trace. But their kindred, the Egyp- 
tians, have not perished, nor have the Israelites, though 
bereft of a home for eighteen centuries, ceased to 
exist. Even the Amorites, more ancient foes of Israel, 
have descendants who can still be distinguished among 
the Arabs of Mount Seir. The Philistines — so power- 
ful of old that the Greeks have applied their name to 
the whole country and called it Palestine — the land 
of the Philistines — these might also have endured 



102 THE SEA-COAST OF PALESTINE. 

either in Philistia or elsewhere. But its plains will be 
searched in vain for the descendants of its ancient 
and war-like masters. Their merchantmen no longer 
plough the sea or crowd their ports. No more do 
the hosts sweep out from under the frowning battle- 
ments of their own mighty cities to defend the land, or 
to carry fire and sword into the country of the foe. 
The strife, which of old stained with blood those 
hills and plains, still adds to their misery; but none 
of that once proud and mighty race have part in it, 
nor are there any, however lowly, who, there or else- 
where, bear their name. The Cherethites have been 
cut off : the remnant of the sea-coast has perished. 
Then this land also was to be 

A DESOLATION. 

It extended from Jaffa to Gaza, being bounded on the 
north by the plain of Sharon, on the west by the 
Mediterranean, on the south by the desert, and on the 
east by the hills of Judah. It contained the five great 
cities of Ekron, Ashdod, Ascalon, Gath, and Gaza. 
We find the names of its strong cities appearing in 
the stories inscribed on the monuments which tell of 
the Assyrian and Egyptian invasions of Syria. Ash- 
dod defied the might of Egypt for 29 years — the long- 
est siege on record. Though one wave after another 
had passed over Philistia, as over the rest of Syria — 
though Persian, and Egyptian, and Greek, and Roman 
had wasted with fire and sword, the country remained 
great and populous, and still possessed her great cities 
long after the beginning of the Christian era. Even 
in the twelfth century the word was still unfulfilled. 
The country was then full of strong cities which were 
taken and retaken during the wars of the crusades. 
But during the last six centuries the judgment has 
slowly but surely fallen; it is deepening even now. 
"Gath has entirely disappeared." Ascalon is now 
"without inhabitant." "Akir," the ancient Ekron, "is 



ITS DESOLATION. 103 

a wretched village, containing some 40 or 50 mud 
hovels; its narrow lanes are encumbered with heaps 
of rubbish and filth. It stands on a bare slope, and 
the ground immediately around it has a dreary and 
desolate look, heightened by a few stunted trees here 
and there round the houses. Yet this is all that marks 
the site and bears the name of the royal city of 
Ekron."* Gaza, not the Gaza of the Philistines as we 
shall afterwards see, is still the seat of a considerable 
population. It forms the first resting-place on the 
caravan route from Egypt, and has about 15,000 in- 
habitants. But notwithstanding its position it has 
hardly retained the shadow of its ancient strength and 
greatness. "-The town resembles a cluster of large 
villages. The principal one stands on the top of a 
low hill, and the others lie on the plain at its base. The 
hill appears to be composed, in a great measure, of 
the accumulated ruins of successive cities. We can 
see portions of massive walls and the ends of old col- 
umns cropping up everywhere from the rubbish. There 
are no walls or defences of any kind."f The once 
mighty Ashdod is a village "wretched in the extreme." 
"The temples, palaces, and houses are all gone." "All 
that is left is a confused group of mud hovels."} 

Nor is it that the population of the country has 
merely changed its dwelling-places. With the excep- 
tions named and a few more it has ceased to exist. 
"Along the whole sea-board are white, sandy downs. 
Within these is the broad undulating plain with its 
rich deep soil and low mounds at intervals 
oyer whose summits the grey ruins of great 
cities are now strewn in the dust. . . . Ruins 
were visible everywhere; but the villages were few, 
small, and far between." || The depopulation of the 

* J. L. Porter; Giant Cities of Bashan and Syria's Holy 

Places, p. 191. 
f/Wtf., p. 204. %Ibid. \\Ibid., pp. 186, 190. 



104 THE SEA-COAST OF PALESTINE. 

country is largely due to "the insecurity of these parts 
at the present day from the unchecked incursions of 
the Bedouin tribes."* Many of the people whose fields 
are on the plains of Philistia, have, for security, fixed 
their dwellings on the hillsides of Judah. The word, 
in short, has been fulfilled, which said, "O Canaan, 
the land of the Philistines, I will destroy thee that 
there shall be no inhabitant" (Zephaniah ii. 5). The 
population, which even now could be sustained by its 
exuberant fertility, has long since passed away. No 
invading host need dread the resistance of Philistia. 
It has ceased to defend itself even from the inroads 
of the robbers of the desert. 

But it will be said the words u there shall be no in- 
habitant" are not literally fulfilled, and the present con- 
dition of the country sprinkled as it is with its miser- 
able villages does not answer to the picture which is 
mirrored in the prophecy. This seeming difficulty, 
however, only brings out the more the wonderful ac- 
curacy with which the present condition of Philistia 
was portrayed. Philistia as it then was, a land of 
great cities, famed for its wealth and splendour, its 
wisdom and martial prowess, its armies and navies, its 
nobles and warriors, its merchants and artificers, was 
to be destroyed. And all have passed away. We look 
in vain for the Philistia of the past. Some ruins of its 
cities remain, but not a vestige of what was once its 
strength and glory can now be found. Yet, though 
the land was to be bereft of those inhabitants, it was 
not to be tenantless. The prophecy reads, "I will de- 
stroy thee that there shall be no inhabitant. And the 
sea-coast shall be pastures, with cottages for shepherds 
and folds for Hocks" (Zeph. ii. 5, 6). 

The former life was to be replaced by this. And 
here our attention is called to two other predictions. 
Though the aspect of the country was to be changed, 

* Stanley ; Syria and Palestine, p. 259. 



THE DESTINY OF THE LAND. 105 

ITS FRUITFULNESS WAS TO REMAIN. 

"The sea-coast shall be for pastures." It is to attract 
and sustain its new possessors. This is perhaps the 
most striking feature of the country. One traveller 
calls it "the garden of Palestine."* All travellers 
speak of its rich corn fields. "The most striking and 
characteristic feature of Philistia," says Stanley, "is 
its immense plain of corn fields, stretching from the 
edge of the sandy tract right up to the very wall of 
the hills of Judah, which look down its whole length 
from north to south. These rich fields must have been 
the great source at once of the power and the wealth 
of Philistia, and of the unceasing efforts of Israel to 
master the territory. It was in fact a little Egypt. 
As these plains form the point of junc- 
tion and contrast with the hills of Judah on the west, 
so they form a point of junction and similarity with 
the wide pastures of the desert on the south."f The 
"plain," says another, "now opened up before us, roll- 
ing away to the southern horizon in graceful undula- 
tions, clothed with a rich mantle of green and gold — 
harvest field and pasture land. . . . The plain was 
all astir with bands of reapers, men and women. . . . 
Leaving this low-lying plain we ascended the bleak 
downs where vast flocks of sheep and camels were 
browsing ; and away on our left, nearly a mile distant, 
we saw the black tents of their Arab owners." He 
speaks of "the noble plain" in the neighbourhood of 
the ancient Ashdod, "stretching away to the foot of 
Judah's mountains, here and there cultivated, but 
mostly neglected and desolate, yet all naturally rich 
as in the palmiest days of Philistia' s power."J 

The fertility of the land, therefore, remains, and 
the words which describe 

* Porter: Giant Cities of Bashan, &c, t Syria and Pales- 

tine, pp. 258, 259. 
$ Porter; Giant Cities of Bashan, &c, pp. 190-195. 



106 THE SEA-COAST OF PALESTINE. 

THE PRESENT ASPECT OF THE LAND AND THE PURPOSE IT 

SERVES 

are also fulfilled. The sea-coast has literally become 
"pastures and cottages for shepherds, and folds for 
flocks." Volney thus describes the country as he 
found it in 1785: — "In the plain between Ramla and 
Gaza we met with a number of villages badly built of 
dried mud, and which, like the inhabitants, exhibit 
every mark of poverty and wretchedness. The houses, 
on a nearer view, are only so many huts, sometimes 
detached, at others ranged in the form of cells, around 
a courtyard enclosed by a mud wall. In winter they 
and their cattle may be said to live together, the part 
of the dwelling allotted to themselves being only raised 
about two feet above that in which they lodge their 
beasts. Except the environs of these villages, all the 
rest of the country is a desert, and abandoned to the 
Bedouin Arabs, who feed their flocks on it." What 
the country then was it still remains. Dr. Thomson 
gives the following graphic description of a large 
village in one of the most flourishing districts. After 
riding for nearly two hours "through an ocean of ripe 
wheat," he came to Mesmia just as the sun set. "There 
I pitched for the night. It is a large agricultural 
village, mud hovels packed together like stacks in a 
barn-yard, and nearly concealed by vast mounds of 
manure on all sides of it. During the night a dense 
fog settled down flat upon the face of the plain, 
through which you could not see ten steps, and the 
scene in the morning was extraordinary and highly 
exciting. Before it was light the village was all abuzz 
like a bee-hive. Forth issued party after party driving 
camels, horses, mules, donkeys, cows, sheep, goats, 
and even poultry before them. To everybody and 
thing there was a separate call, and the roar and up- 
roar was prodigious."* Referring to the Temple of 

* The Land and the Book, I., p. 161. 



ASCALON, EKRON, GAZA. 107 

Dagon, one of th£ glories of ancient Ashdod, Porter 
says : "Not a vestige of the temple is there now. Along 
the southerly declivity old building stones with frag- 
ments of columns and sculptured capitals are piled up 
in the fences of little fields, and in the walls of goat 
and sheep pens, showing how time and God's un- 
changeableness have converted prophecy into history: 
'and the sea-coast shall be dwellings, and cottages for 
shepherds and folds for flocks! "* 

We may notice in connection with this country some 
startling instances of the minute fulfilment of prophecy. 
They are presented in the diverse fates of three of its 
great cities. The prophet Zechariah declares, "Ash- 
kelon shall not be inhabited" (ix. 5) ; and Zephaniah, 
"Ashkelon" shall be "a 'desolation" (ii. 4). The latter 
prophet immediately after the prediction w r e have just 
noticed, continues: "And the coast shall be for the 
remnant of the house of JudaTi; they shall feed theij 
flocks thereupon : in the houses of Ashkelon shall they 
lie 'down in the evening : for the Lord their God shall 
visit them, and turn away their captivity." It would 
seem, therefore, that though the inhabitant should 
cease from Ascalon, the place should remain even till 
the ingathering of Israel. What, then, is the fact? 
Till nearly the end of the thirteenth century Ascalon 
retained its strength and greatness, when its fortifica- 
tions were demolished by the Sultan Bibars, and its 
harbour was filled up with stones. The walls present 
evidence of their having been rebuilt, and it was held 
by a Turkish garrison so late as the beginning of the 
seventeenth century. Since that time it has been totally 
deserted. The modern village is to the north of the 
old site, and not even those who own orchards within 
the walls plant their dwellings there. The walls of 
the town, with their ruined towers and battlements, 
still remain, and in this respect Ascalon stands alone 

* Giant Cities of Bashan, &c, p. 195. 



Io8 THE SEA-COAST OF PALESTINE. 

among the ancient cities of Philistia. "The topography 
of this place/' writes Dr. Thomson, "is very peculiar. 
A lofty and abrupt ridge begins near the shore, runs 
up eastward, bends round to the south, then to the 
west, and finally north-west to the sea again, form- 
ing an irregular amphitheatre. On the top of this 
ridge ran the wall, which was defended at its salient 
angles by strong towers. The specimens which still 
exist show that it was very high and thick. . . . The 
position is .one of the fairest along this part of the 
Mediterranean coast. . . . The walls must have 
been blown to pieces by powder, for not even earth- 
quakes could toss these gigantic masses of masonry 
into such extraordinary attitudes. No site in this coun- 
try has so deeply impressed my mind with sadness."* 
Ascalon is a desolation, but it waits to render a final 
service. Ibrahim Pasha in 1840 cleared part of the 
ruins to bivouac the Egyptian troops, and in so doing 
uncovered no fewer than 20 wells of water. The 
cleared space has since been occupied as gardens, and 
Dr. Thomson says: "Ashkelon will surely be rebuilt 
at some future day of prosperity for this unhappy land. 
The position is altogether too advantageous to allow 
it to sink into total neglect."f 

In the same prediction of Zephaniah we read: "Ek- 
ron" (more correctly Akkaron) "shall be rooted up" 
(ii. 4). The words are unusual and striking, yet few 
would think of laying special stress upon them. Let 
the event instruct us. The site is still called Akir, 
and there still remain upon it a few inhabitants. But 
round the small village no mounds are seen such as 
mark the sites of other ancient cities. Ekron has liter- 
ally been rooted up. The place where it once stood 
is now ploughed fields, and the only evidence that a 
city ever existed there is found in the stones of hand- 
mills and the ancient cisterns which are occasionally 
met with by the cultivators. 

* The Land and the Book, pp. 545, 546. f Ibid., p. 546. 



ASCALON, EKRON, GAZA. IOQ 

It is also said in Zephaniah, "Gaza shall be for- 
saken" (ii. 4) ; and in Jeremiah, "Baldness is come 
upon Gaza" (xlvii. 5). There is still a town of this 
name, as we have seen, which has at present a popula- 
tion of about fifteen thousand. Dr. Keith, in the 
earlier editions of his large and valuable work on 
Prophecy, found this a difficulty. It seemed plain that 
either the time had not yet come for the fulfilment of 
the predictions, or that the language of the prophets 
was not to be taken quite literally, and that the once 
great city of Gaza might be regarded as offering in 
its present fallen condition a comparatively close ful- 
filment. But meanwhile the prophecies had been so 
fully accomplished that the ancient Gaza could lift no 
protest against the mistake which was being made. 
The modern town is not built, as Dr. Keith after- 
wards discovered, on the site of the old, and is there- 
fore not the subject of the prophecies. The great 
Gaza of the Philistines lay two miles nearer the shore, 
and is now a series of sand-hills, covered with minute 
but manifold remains. It is so forsaken that there is 
not a single hut resting upon its site. It is so bald 
that neither pillar nor standing stone marks the place 
where the city stood, nor is there a single blade of 
grass on which 'the weary eye can rest. 

Every one will feel how startlingly clear and minute 
these prophetic pictures are. Were they mere de- 
scriptions we should admire their accuracy and happy 
fitness of expression. But our wonder is intensified as 
we mark how accurately the fate of those three allied 
cities is discriminated. The description of Ascalon, 
desolate and tenantless, awaiting a day of restoration 
when it may receive wanderers to its shelter, can be 
applied to neither Ekron nor Gaza. Gaza though for- 
saken and bald, has not been rooted up. Its mounds 
remain, bald though they are ; their stones are some- 
times quarried to meet the wants of the neighbouring 
town, and it is possible that the foundations of the 



110 ASCALON, EKRON, GAZA. 

ancient city may yet be laid bare. Only to Ekron does 
that briefest but truest of all possible descriptions 
apply — it alone has been "rooted up." The traveller 
who would to-day apply these y^ords for the first time, 
we should judge to be possessed of clear observation, 
and of that rarer penetration and sympathy of genius 
which grasp to its inmost depths the thing with which 
they deal. Add to this, what we know, that the words 
stood upon the page of Scripture for long centuries 
before any sign appeared of their fulfilment, and then 
say what we are to think of such things. Very high 
claims have been made on behalf of the Scriptures ; 
but if we test them by these three words, we think 
the highest claim of all will be amply sustained. 



a 



CHAPTER VII. 

JUDEA AND BABYLON. 

From the sea-coast of Palestine we now pass over to 
the land of Israel. We have some remarkable prophe- 
cies regarding Judea, as well as regarding the Jews, 
in the Books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. They 
are predictions the fulfilment of which was to be con- 
tingent on the prolonged disobedience, the persistent 
rebellion, oT the Israelites. After having spoken of 
milder chastisements the Scripture proceeds: "And if 
ye will not for all this hearken unto Me, but walk con- 
trary unto Me, then I will walk contrary unto you in 
fury, and I will also chastise you seven times for your 
sins. . . . And I will destroy your high places. 
. . . And I will make your cities a waste, and will 
bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not 
smell the savour of your sweet odours, and I will 
bring the land into desolation, and your enemies which 
dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And you, will I 
scatter among the nations, and I will draw out the 
sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation 
and your cities shall be a waste. Then shall the land 
enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate and ye 
be in your enemies' land, even then shall the land have 
rest and enjoy her sabbaths" (Levit. xxvi. 27-34). 

These words were written before the Israelites en- 
tered Palestine. There were partial and temporary ful- 



112 JUDEA. / 

filments before tfie Christian era, such as ffie removal 
to Babylon, from the consideration of which we are 
precluded by the limits which we have assigned our- 
selves. But if these words ever were to be fulfilled they 
ought to be fulfilled now. They are a statement of what 
God is to do in the event of Israel's stubborn resistance 
to His will. Their continued unbelief, their persistent 
disobedience, are to be followed by these judgments 
whlcli are to mark them as the objects of God's dis- 
pleasure. Now, if Christianity is of God and these 
words are His, this must be beyond every other, the 
time of their fulfilment. For if Christ is indeed the 
Saviour promised from of old and the King whom 
God has anointed over Zion, then there is nothing 
which Israel has ever done which has equalled the 
rebellion of these nearly 19 centuries. It has been high- 
handed and utter. There has not been the slightest 
attempt, or pretence of an attempt, even to make a 
compromise. They have wholly rejected God's cove- 
nant. For that covenant, as made with Abraham, 
spoke of Him in whom all nations of the earth were 
to be blessed. When it was reinstituted under Moses, 
it made mention of the Prophet like unto him. When 
the one King of God's appointment was set over Israel, 
they were pointed to David's son, w T hose sceptre should 
rule the nations and whose dominion should be ever- 
lasting; and this Anointed One was ever more clearly 
set forth by the prophets who, according to the Jews' 
own admission, w°re the inspired exponents of the 
'Divine will. And yet, when He came, they said "we 
will not have this man to reign over us." They cruci- 
fied Him. They blasphemed His name. They perse- 
cuted His followers. They tried to stamp out the 
acknowledgment, and even the remembrance, of Him, 
from the earth. And to-day, though powerless — we 
may also say unwishful — to injure Christianity, their 
rejection of it is still sullen and contemptuous. If, 
in the face of all this, nothing which the servant of 



THE DESOLATION OF ITS HOLY PLACES. 113 

God spoke of had been done, I can conceive of no 
stronger argument against Christianity than those very- 
words of his would supply. It would then be clearly 
proved either that the words were not true, or that, 
in rejecting Christ, the Jews were not rejecting any- 
thing which could be called the covenant, or the will, 
of God. But if, on the other hand, the words have 
all been fulfilled to the letter, are not both claims fully 
proved ? If the punishment has been contemporaneous 
with the rebellion ; if the punishment has been as pro- 
longed as the rebellion has been enduring ; what then ? 
Shall we not read there that these are God's words 
and that Jesus is God's gift to us ? 

Let us see, then, whether the prophecy has been 
made good. We confine ourselves at present to what 
is said of the land — the story of the people will come 
before us again. We notice first of all that there was 
to be 

A CESSATION OF JEWISH WORSHIP AND THE DESOLATION 
OF THEIR SANCTUARIES. 

"I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours," "I 
will destroy your high places . . . and will bring 
your sanctuaries unto desolation" (Levit. xxvi. 30, 
31). We know what Jewish worship was in the time 
of our Lord. The prescribed service of the law was 
celebrated with pomp and splendour by a fully equipped 
and richly-sustained priesthood. The temple tax of 
two drachmae was paid not only by the Jews in Judea 
and Galilee. Wherever the Jew was found through- 
out the known world the tax was collected and for- 
warded to Jerusalem. The Temple itself was one of 
the wonders of the world. "High above the whole 
city rose the Temple, uniting the commanding strength 
of a citadel with the splendour of a sacred edifice. 
According to Josephus the esplanade on which it stood 
had been considerably enlarged by the accumulation 
of fresh soil since the days of Solomon, particularly on 



114 JUDEA. 

the north side. It now covered a square of a furlong 
each side."* Of the internal splendours of the edifice, 
the beauty and magnificence of the colonnades and 
courts and gates, we need not speak. "The outward 
face of the Temple in its front wanted nothing that 
was likely to surprise either men's minds or their eyes, 
for at the first rising of the sun it reflected back a very 
fiery splendour, and made those who forced themselves 
to look upon it, to turn their eyes away, just as they 
would have done at the sun's own rays. It appeared 
to strangers when they were at a distance like a moun- 
tain covered with snow, for those parts of it that were 
not covered with gold were exceeding white." "Vast 
and splendid," says Hosmer, "the Temple certainly was. 
The Romans were then at the height of power, and 
familiar with all the magnificence of the earth, yet it 
seemed to them one of the wonders of the world. No 
doubt it far surpassed in greatness and beauty the 
structure of Solomon, upon whose foundations it was 
reared. The Herods had lavished upon it vast treas- 
ures."! 

Such then was the worship, and the "Holy Place" of 
the Jew at the time of our Lord. But, as we have seen, 
it stood written from the time they passed out of Egypt 
that, if they consummated their sin and completed their 
rebellion by the rejection of God's covenant, their Holy 
Places would be brought into desolation and their wor- 
ship should cease. About the year 26 of our era Jesus, 
the Messiah, was manifested. After three-and-a-half 
years of opposition and persecution the Roman Gover- 
nor was compelled by the Jewish Rulers to do their 
will, and Jesus was crucified. Then the Gospel' of a 
crucified and risen Redeemer was preached. And now 
in their turn the heralds of the Cross were rejected, 
maligned, imprisoned, scourged, and slain. Then in 
the year 70 the blow fell. The Roman armies swept 

* Milman, History of the Tews, II., p. 331. 
t The Jews, p. 104. 



THE JEWS TO BE DRIVEN FROM THE COUNTRY. 115 

the land with fire and sword, the bitter opposition they 
met with fanning their rage to tenfold fierceness. The 
priesthood perished. The Holy Places were literally 
brought into desolation. The Temple was burned and 
ruthlessly demolished. Jerusalem was dedicated to 
Jupiter Capitolinus, and the figure of a sow was placed 
over the gate leading to Bethlehem, so that under its 
polluting shadow no Jew might pass. Never since 
then has the Jew offered a single sacrifice prescribed by 
the Law. From that day to this the multitudes who 
from every quarter under heaven went up to keep 
holy-day have ceased. To this hour the doom of deso- 
lation remains, and these 18 centuries are the witnesses 
to the truth of the words, "I will not smell the savour 
of your sweet odours. I will destroy your high places 
. . . and will bring your sanctuaries into desola- 
tion." 

But terrible as this punishment was, there were to be 
still other tokens of the Divine displeasure. 

THE ISRAELITES WERE TO BE DRIVEN FROM THEIR LAND. 

"You, will I scatter among the nations" (Levit. xxvi. 
33). Men were to say of them, "The Lord rooted 
them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in 
great indignation, and cast them into another land 
as at this day" (Deut. xxix. 28). The dispersion of 
the Jews is one of the common-places of history. Their 
story is one more proof how the words of Scripture 
are filled to the brim, so to speak, with meaning. Not 
only was the race cut down like a tree and its branches 
scattered abroad: it was literally "rooted out." The 
work was not wholly done in the first conquest under 
Vespasian and Titus, when Jerusalem was taken, and 
one stronghold after another went down, and all re- 
sistance was trampled under foot. It is true that multi- 
tudes perished then, and that many more were carried 
away to be slain in Roman amphitheatres or to spend 



Il6 JUDEA. 

their lives in slavery. But it would appear that many 
of the dwellers in the villages and in the cities were 
allowed to remain in the land. It was not till 60 
years afterwards (135 a. d.) that the ruin of the people 
was completed. A false Messiah, named Barcochebas 
(the son of a star), inflamed their desire for venge- 
ance, and their hope that God would regard them in 
their misery. The remnant left in the land was now 
strong enough to garrison 50 castles and 985 villages. 
Their first efforts seem to have been attended with 
success. The Romans were defeated, and Julius 
Severus, the most distinguished general of the time, 
was summoned from Britain to take command of the 
Roman forces. The suppression of the rebellion was 
a work of time and skill, and was attended with losses 
so severe that that war was ever afterwards remem- 
bered as one of the most disastrous in which the 
Romans had ever engaged. Terrible stories are told 
by~the Rabbins of the carnage which marked the final 
triumph of Rome, and a Roman historian records that 
during the war 580,000 fell by the sword, not includ- 
ing those who perished by famine, disease, or fire. 
The people who remained were gathered together in 
droves, driven to markets, and sold as slaves. The 
land was wholly depopulated : the people were "rooted 
out/' and have never been planted again in the land 
promised to their fathers. Nearly 6,000 are found in 
Jerusalem, and about 5,000 in other parts of their 
ancient territory. That the Jews will eventually re- 
turn to Palestine, we know. The fulfilment of the 
predictions which foretold judgment are the pledge 
that those also will be accomplished which promise* 
mercy. But meanwhile the doom remains. Rabbi- 
no witz, who went in 1882. to Palestine with the view 
of determining whether the "tribes of the wandering 
foot and weary breast" might not find a refuge in their 
ancient home, had to abandon the idea. He was com- 
pelled to admit that the poverty of the soil and the 



ITS CITIES TO BE WASTE. II? 

oppression of the Turkish government make return 
an impossibility. 

But, though deprived of her ancient masters, the 
land was not to be without inhabitant. 

THEIR ENEMIES WERE TO DWELL IN IT. 

"I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies 
who dwell therein shall be astonished at it" (Levit. 
xxvi. 32). The Israelites were to be rooted out, but 
others were to be planted in their stead. And the 
words were fulfilled. After the suppression of the 
outbreak in 135 a.d., the whole of the land was put up 
to sale by command of the Emperor Hadrian, and was 
bought by Gentiles, who flocked in to settle in the 
country from which the Jews had been swept out. 
From that time to this their enemies have dwelt 
therein. The races who originally purchased the land 
have long ago been supplanted by others, but all have 
been alike in this that they were and are aliens and 
hostile to the Jew. 
Then 

THE CITIES WERE TO BE A WASTE. 

This was largely fulfilled in 70, and still more fully in 
J 35- We are told that then "the whole of Judea was 
a desert: wolves and hyenas ^went howling along the 
streets of the desolate cities." It might be supposed, 
however, that, if the preceding prediction were ful- 
filled and the land were inhabited by the enemies of 
the Jews, this desolation could not be a permanent 
feature of the country. And yet this was to be one 
of the enduring marks of the Divine indignation — 
"Your cities shall be a waste" (Levit. xxvi. 33). For 
a time the doom seemed to be successfully withstood. 
The fulfilment of the one prophecy appeared to pre- 
vent the fulfilment of the other. The ruined cities 
were peopled and re-built by the new settlers. And, 
when Christianity had triumphed in its long warfare 



Il8 JUDEA. 

with the heathenism of the Roman Empire, and Con- 
stantine sat upon the throne of the Caesars, Palestine 
was made to feel the change. Magnificent churches 
were reared on every spot hallowed by Old or New 
Testament story. It became a holy land to the whole 
Roman Empire. When the Persians under Chosroes 
II. invaded the country in the beginning of the seventh 
century, Galilee and the district on the other side of 
the Jordan were so full of strong cities that the pro- 
gress of the Persian hosts was seriously delayed. A 
few years afterwards the Arab invaders were occupied 
four months in the siege of Jerusalem, and the siege 
then ended only because the Christians capitulated 
upon their own terms. Four centuries later the Cru- 
saders found Palestine still possessed of strong cities 
— so long did the word of God wait, or rather so slow 
are the harvests of judgment. But the word did not 
wait in vain. The threat, "Your cities shall be a 
waste," has long since been abundantly fulfilled. Trav- 
ellers speak of its desolation with positive amazement. 
Captain Conder refers to Judea as "this ruined land."* 
Of the Shephelah, or western lowlands, the most fertile 
and thickly populated district of the land of Israel, he 
says: "The ruins are so thickly spread over hill and 
valley that in some parts there are as many as three 
ancient sites to two square miles."f Dean Stanley 
speaks of "the countless ruins of Palestine/'^ He else- 
where draws attention to the "peculiarity of the present 
aspect of Palestine, which though not, properly speak- 
ing, a physical feature, is so closely connected both 
with its outward imagery and with its general situa- 
tion that it cannot be omitted. Above all other 
countries in the world it is a Land of Ruins "\\ "It is 
not that the particular ruins are on a scale equal to 

* Tent Work in Palestine, p. 7. t Ibid., p. 2. 

X Syria and Palestine, p. 119. || The Italics and Capitals are 

the Dean's. 



THE LAND TO BE DESOLATE. II9 

those of Greece or Italy, still less to those of Egypt. 
But there is no country in which they are so numerous, 
none in which they bear so large a proportion to the 
villages and towns still in existence. In Judea It is 
hardly an exaggeration to say that whilst for miles ancl 
miles there is no appearance of present ITEe or habita- 
tion, except the occasional goat-herd on the hill-side, 
or gathering of women at the wells, there is yet hardly 
a hill-top of the many within sight which is not cov- 
ered by the vestiges of some fortress or city of former 
ages. Sometimes they are fragments of ancient walls, 
sometimes mere foundations and piles of stone, but 
always enough to indicate signs of human habitation 
and civilisation."* Of Jerusalem, which, according 
to another prediction, has continued from generation 
to generation, this is nevertheless also true. The chief 
of Israel's cities has not escaped the general doom. 
Dean Stanley says: "If, as we have before observed, 
Palestine is a land of ruins, still more emphatically 
may it be said that Jerusalem is a city of ruins. Here 
and there a regular street, or a well-built European 
house emerges from the general crash, but the general 
appearance is that of a city which has been burnt down 
in some great conflagration." f 

We have now to mark a kindred feature in the pro- 
phetic picture. 

THE LAND WAS ALSO TO BE DESOLATE. 

Here, again, it might be supposed that the possession 
of the country by the enemies of the Jews would have 
made the accomplishment of the prophecy impossible. 
If industrious settlers took the place of those whom 
God had swept away, why should not the land have re- 
mained as fertile and populous under them as under 
their predecessors? There is no doubt that for ages 
its fertility and populousness did remain. But it was 

*Ibid., p. 117. -flbid., p. 183. 



120 JUDEA. 

written from of old that this should be another mark 
of God's displeasure against His people: "I will bring 
the land into desolation ; and your enemies who dwell 
therein shall be astonished at it. . . . Your land 
shall be a desolation. N . . . Then shall the land 
enjoy her Sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and 
ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land 
rest and enjoy her Sabbaths. As long as it lieth deso- 
late it shall have rest; even the rest which it had not 
in your Sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it" (Levit. xxvi. 

32-35)- 

The reiteration will be marked. The desolation of 
the land is as prominent a feature in the prophetic pic- 
ture as the scattering of Israel among the nations. And 
this judgment too has fallen. Henry Maundrell, who 
visited the country in 1697, says : "All along this day's 
travel from Khan Leban to Beer, and also as far as we 
could see around, the country discovered a quite differ- 
ent face from what it had before, presenting nothing 
to the view, in most places, but bare rocks, mountains, 
and precipices. . . . Leaving Beer, we proceeded 
as before in a rude 2 stony country." I have already 
quoted the words of Dean Stanley, that "for miles and 
miles there is no appearance of present life or habita- 
tion, except the occasional goat-herd on the hill-side, 
or gathering of women at the wells." Elsewhere he 
speaks of "the present depressed and desolate state" 
of the land. To "the question which Eastern travellers 
so often ask and are asked, on their return, 'Can these 
stony, these deserted valleys, be indeed the Land of 
Promise, the land flowing with milk and honey?' " he 
quotes in answer the words of Dr. Olin : "The entire 
destruction of the woods which once covered the moun- 
tains, and the utter neglect of the terraces which sup- 
ported the soil on steep declivities, have given full 
scope to the rains which have left many traces of bare 
rock where formerly were vineyards and cornfields." 
And he adds : "The very labour which was expended 



THE LAND TO BE DESOLATE, 121 

on these sterile hills in former times has increased 
their present sterility. The natural vegetation has been 
swept away, and no human cultivation now occupies 
the terraces which once took the place of forests and 
pastures." * Speaking of the district about Lake 
Huleh, Mark Twain says : "Stirring scenes like these 
occur in this valley no more. There is not a solitary 
village throughout its whole extent — nor for thirty 
miles in either direction. There are two or three small 
clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent 
habitation. One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not 
see ten human beings. To this region one of the 
prophecies is applied. T will bring the land into deso- 
lation ; and your enemies which dwell therein shall be 
astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the 
heathen, and I will draw out a sword after you ; and 
your land shall be desolate and your cities waste.' No 
man can stand here by deserted Ain Mellahah and say 
the prophecy has not been fulfilled." And again : "It 
is seven in the morning, and as we are in the country, 
the grass ought to be sparkling with dew, the flowers 
enriching the air with their fragrance, and the birds 
singing in the trees. But alas, there is no dew here, 
nor flowers, nor birds, nor trees. There is a plain and 
an unshaded lake, and beyond them some barren 
mountains, "f 

"The valley (of Shechem)," writes Captain Conder, 
"is the most luxuriant in Palestine. . . But as at 
Damascus the oasis is set in a desert, and the stony, 
barren mountains contrast strongly with the green 
orchards below. "J The Rev. J. L. Porter says: "I 
climbed a peak which commands the lake, and the Jor- 
dan valley up to the waters of Merom. The principal 
scene of Christ's public labours lay around me — a re- 

* Syria and Palestine, pp. 120, 121. 
t The New Pilgrim's Progress, pp. 123, 124. % Tent Work 

in Palestine, p. 7. 



122 JUDEA. 

gion some tKirty miles long by ten wide. When He 
had His home at Capernaum, the whole country was 
teeming with life, and bustle, and industry. No less 
than ten cities, with numerous villages, studded the 
shores of the lake, and the plains, and the hill-sides 
around. The water was all speckled with the dark 
boats and white sails of Galilee's fishermen. Eager 
multitudes followed the footsteps of Jesus through 
the city streets, over the flower-strewn fields, along the 
pebbly beach. What a woeful change has passed over 
the land since that time ! The Angel of destruction has 
been there. From that commanding height, through 
the clear Syrian atmosphere, I was able to distinguish, 
by the aid of my glass, every spot in that wide region 
celebrated in sacred history or hallowed by sacred as- 
sociation. . . Not a city, not a village, not a house, 
not a sign of settled habitation was there except the 
few huts of Magdala, and the shattered houses of 
Tiberias. A mournful and solitary silence reigned 
triumphant. Desolation keeps unbroken Sabbath in 
Galilee now." * 

An equally graphic description is given of another 
district. "Geba, the ancient city of Canaan, the strong- 
hold of Benjamin, is now represented by a few ruinous 
huts, in which some half-dozen shepherds find a home. 
A shattered tower, and the foundations of an old 
church, with heaps of hewn stones and rubbish, are 
the only vestiges of former greatness. Standing there 
all solitary on its bare rocky ridge, looking down over 
barren hills and naked ravines upon the scathed valley 
of tfie Jordan, it is the very type of desolation. The 
curse has fallen heavily upon 'Geba of Benjamin. , 
When Elisha came up the defile from Jericho to Bethel, 
forests clothed the surrounding heights ; now there is 
not a tree (II. Kings ii. 24). Vineyards then covered 
the terraced sides of glen and hill from base to sum- 

* Giant Cities of Bashan, &c, pp. 107, 108. 



TO BE A LAND OF PILGRIMAGES. 123 

mit. Cities and fortresses, in the days of Israel's 
power, crowned every peak and studded every ridge ; 
shapeless mounds now mark their deserted sites. From 
the site of Geba_no less than nine ruined towns and 
villages were pointed out to me. How wonderfully 
have the predictions of Moses been fulfilled! 'I will 
destroy your high places. . . I will make your 
cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries into desola- 
tion. . . And I will bring the land into desolation ; 
and your enemies which dwell therein shall be aston- 
ished at it' (Levit. xxvi. 30, 32)."* 

But not only was it predicted that the land should 
be desolate; 

THE DURATION OF THE DESOLATION 

was also foretold. It is a plain inference from the 
passages we have referred to in Levit. xxvi. and Deut. 
xxix. that, so long as the rebellion continued, this mark 
of God's anger would remain. But the Scripture has 
not left us to inferences. The duration, both of the 
rebellion, and of its punishment, has been distinctly 
foretold. Isaiah, the Evangelist of prophecy, was sent 
on a mission which, he was forewarned, would be fruit- 
less of any immediate result. Instead of awaking Israel 
to repentance, he and those whom he preceded would 
only deepen their slumber. The prophet asks how 
long this blindness and death will remain. And he is 
answered: "Until cities be waste without inhabitant 
and houses without man, and the land become utterly 
waste, and the Lord have removed men far away, and 
the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land" 
(Isaiah vi. II, 12). That was the answer to the 
prophet's cry "Lord, how long?" Israel should refuse 
to hear till deepening judgment had brought the land 
into the condition pictured in those words — the con- 
dition in which it lies to-day. 

*Ibid., pp. 179, 180. 



124 JUDEA. 

We haVe now to notice what seems to me one of the 
most surprising touches in this prophetic description. 
The land of Israel, bereft of her ancient people, ruined, 
desolate, was nevertheless to be 

A LAND OF PILGRIMAGES! 

The prophecy (Deut. xxix. 22) foretells that among 
those who will draw attention to the land and its judg- 
ments will be "the foreigner that shall come from 
a far land/'' Let it be noted that the judgments 
which were to fall were such as should rob Judea of 
everything which might attract the foreigner from a 
far land. The cities were to be a waste ; the land a 
desolation. There could be no commerce to allure, 
nor beauty to attract. And what could it matter to the 
nations that this had once been the home of the scat- 
tered Israelites? Their exclusiveness, their arrogance 
and turbulence, sowed everywhere a plentiful harvest 
of hatred and scorn. The fulfilment of this prophecy 
depended, in short, upon the triumph of Christianity, 
If the covenant which the Jews rejected were once 
accepted by the Gentiles, and the God of Israel became 
the God of the nations, then would Judea be indeed "a 
holy Land." A consecration, deeper than priestly rites 
could give, would then rest on every spot hallowed by 
Old or New Testament story. But who could have 
foreseen that the fall of Israel should be "the riches 
of the world, and their loss their riches of the Gen- 
tiles ?" When the last remnant of the Jewish nation 
was swept from the land by Hadrian in 135 a. r>: 
Christianity was still struggling against fearful odds ; 
and, if men were to judge by what they saw, it had 
not even then the remotest chance of succeeding in the 
conflict. Rome was at the height of its power. In the 
days of its comparative weakness it had subdued one 
mighty nation after another: it had stamped out pow- 
erful and wide-spread conspiracies. What chance had 



DESOLATION OF SAMARIA. 1 25 

Christianity, devoid of political influence and without 
so much as Peter's sword to aid it — what chance had 
it, where all else had failed, of succeeding or even of 
existing, in the teeth of the determined hostility of the 
entire Roman Empire? And yet, right through the 
heart of these improbabilities, those words advanced to 
their accomplishment. Christianity has long since 
triumphed. Osiris, Bel and Baal, Zeus and Jupiter, 
Thor and Odin, and the entire pantheon of the Roman 
Empire, as well as of nations on whose neck the 
Roman yoke was never set, have given place to the 
God of Israel. The land of Judea has long since be- 
come more sacred to the Gentile than it ever was to 
the Jew, for it has been the scene of the life and min- 
istry and suffering of the Son of God. From the 
Fourth century to the present hour "the foreigner from 
a far land" has never ceased to tread its soil and to 
wonder at the fulfilment of prophecy, perhaps uncon- 
scious that his own presence there is as wonderful a 
fulfilment as any. 

Before we pass from the Land of Israel, we may 
glance at some predictions regarding four of its cities. 
We notice first 

THE DOOM OF BETHEL. 

This was one of the most ancient sanctuaries of the 
land, and its situation within the territory of the ten 
tribes was taken advantage of by Jeroboam. To pre- 
vent the tribes going to worship at Jerusalem he reared 
a temple around its ancient altar, and that semi-idola- 
trous worship was instituted which prepared the way 
for the after service of Baal. When God visited the 
ten tribes for their iniquity, Bethel was also to bear the 
mark of His indignation. Its altars were to be smitten 
(Amos iii. 14). Its grandeur was to pass away: "I 
will smite the winter house with the summer house; 
and the houses of ivory shall perish, and the great 
houses shall have an end saith the Lord" (iii. 15). 



126 SAMARIA. 

And the desolation was to be still more complete : 
"Bethel shall come to nought" (v. 5). This judgment 
was no doubt partly executed by King Josiah. But 
the words had not then, nor for ages after, reached 
their fulfilment. It was still a city in the days of 
Josephus. In the time of Jerome it existed as a small 
village. The last notice of it is met with in the sixth 
century. From that time till the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century we have no further reference to it. In 
the middle ages travellers pass over the site without 
remark, and it is only in recent times that it has been 
identified. And now the veil is lifted only to show 
how fully the word has been fulfilled. "Bethel is at 
present represented by a hamlet called Beit-in. It is 
not yet (1851) 20 years since people began to identify 
it with the ancient Bethel. The latter had fallen quite 
into oblivion. Its ruins cover a large extent of ground. 
. . . . The foundations of houses, loose building- 
stones, and fragments of walls, are to be seen in 
abundance." * It is a "confused mass of prostrate 
walls and ruins. . . . We have seen no place in 
this country whose present condition is in such painful 
contrast to its past history as poor fallen Bethel. "f 
Dean Stanley says, "Bethel, the 'House of God/ has 
become literally Bethaven, 'the house of naught.' " One 
speaks of "the wild and stony desolation that spreads 
itself over these old mountain heights," and another 
describes it as "that dreary field of ruin." 

Such was the doom which hung over the Holy Place 
of the ten tribes. A similar one rested on 

SAMARIA, 

which, from the days of Omri, was their capital and 
one of the chief glories of the country. If we are to 
judge from the length of the sieges which this city 

* Van de Velde, II., pp. 282, 283. 
f The Land and the Book, II., pp. 91, 93. 



SAMARIA. 127 

sustained, its position must be reckoned among the 
very strongest in the land. It was equally marked by 
beauty and fertility. But what are natural strength 
and beauty and fertility without righteousness? After 
speaking of the indignation of God at the "transgres- 
sion of Jacob" and "the sins of the house of Israel," 
£he prophet Micah asks: "What is the transgression 
of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? . . . Therefore I 
will make Samaria as the heap of the field, and as the 
plantings of a vineyard: and I will pour down the 
stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the 
foundations thereof" (Micah i. 5, 6). 

But here, as elsewhere, the doom lingered and 
seemed sometimes to be swept back and defied. In 109 
b. c. the Jewish High Priest, John Hyrcanus, took 
Samaria after a year's siege, and levelled it to the 
ground. The desolation was not ?/ however, of long 
duration. It was rebuilt by the orders of Gabinius 
about 50 years after, and was a few years later restored 
fully and with great splendour by Herod the Great, 
who named it Sebaste (Augusta) in honour of his 
patron the Roman Emperor. Josephus mentions it as 
a city in 70 a. d. It was the seat of a Roman colony 
in the third century of our era, and on the conversion 
of the empire it became an Episcopal See. The names 
of the Bishops of Sebaste appear from time to time 
in the records of the Councils — -the last notice occur- 
ring in connection with the Synod of Jerusalem, held 
in the year 536. It was taken by the Mohammedans 
in the beginning of the seventh century, and it figures 
also in the story of the Crusades. For some time after 
it retained its position among the cities of Palestine. 
Sir John Maundeville, who visited the country in 1322, 
calls it "the chief city" of the district. But the doom 
has long since fallen, and the prediction which so many 
ages seemed to mock, has become the most accurate 
of all descriptions. Henry Maundrell, telling what 
he saw in 1697, sa y s - "Sebaste is the ancient Samaria, 



128 SAMARIA. 

the imperial city of the ten tribes after their revolt 
from the House of David. ... It is situate upon 
a long mount of an oval figure, having first a fruitful 
valley and then a ring of hills running round about it. 
This great city is now wholly converted into gardens, 
and all the tokens that remain to testify that there has 
ever been such a place, are only, on the north side, a 
large square piazza encompassed with pillars, and on 
the east some poor remains of a great church." 

As it was then found, it has since remained. "The 
whole hill of Sebastieh," says Robinson, "consists of 
fertile soil; it is now cultivated to the top, and has 
upon it many olive and fig trees. The ground has been 
ploughed for centuries ; and hence it is now in vain to 
look for the foundations and stones of the ancient 
city." * Van de Velde calls it a "pitiable hamlet, con- 
sisting of a few squalid houses, inhabited by a band of 
plunderers. . . . The shafts of a few pillars only 
remain standing to indicate the sites of the colonnades. 
. . . Samaria, a huge heap of stones ! her founda- 
tions discovered, her streets ploughed up, and covered 
with corn fields and olive gardens. . . . Samaria 
has been destroyed, but her rubbish has been thrown 
down into the valley; her foundation stones, those 
grayish ancient quadrangular stones of the time of 
Omri and Ahab, are discovered, and lie scattered about 
on the slope of the hill."f "Ruins everywhere," writes 
another, "in the valley, on the hill-side, down the 
mountain-top, amidst the olive-groves, the wheat-fields, 
and the vineyards, forcibly bringing before the mind 
the wrath of God against that city."J Here also the 
words have been literally fulfilled. The prediction has 
become a description. The stones of the great city 
have been taken up by the cultivators and piled to- 



* Researches in Palestine, II., p. 307. 
Syria and Palestine, I., pp. 378-384. t The Land and the 
Book, II., p. 112. 



THE DOOM OF CAPERNAUM. I29 

gether or thrown down the hill-sides, that its site might 
be turned into fields and vineyards. Samaria has been 
changed into "the heap of the field" and into "the 
planting of a vineyard." Its stones are poured down 
into the valley and its very foundations are laid bare. 

Two other cities, the names of which are forever 
embalmed in the story of our Lord's life on earth, de- 
mand a passing notice. Capernaum "rose under 
the gentle declivities of hills that encircled an earthly 
Paradise. There were no such trees, and no such 
gardens anywhere in Palestine as in the land of Gen- 
nesareth. . . Josephus, in a passage of glowing 
admiration, after describing the sweetness of its waters, 
and the delicate temperature of its air, its palms, and 
vines, and oranges, and figs, and almonds, and pome- 
granates, and warm springs, says that the seasons 
seemed to compete for the honor of its possession, and 
Nature to have created it as a kind of emulative chal- 
lenge, wherein she had gathered all the elements of her 
strength. . . . 'The cities/ says Josephus, 'lie here 
very thick ; and the very numerous villages are so full 
of people, because of the fertility of the land . . . 
that the very smallest of them contain above 15,000 in- 
habitants/ No less than four roads communicated 
with the shores of the Lake. . . . Through this 
district passed the great caravans on their way from 
Egypt to Damascus/' * 

But Capernaum shared largely in a fuller blessing 
than trade or earthly fertility and beauty could bestow. 
It was the home of Jesus during the busy years of His 
ministry. It was called "His own city." His was a 
familiar presence in its streets. The dwellers there 
had been spectators of many a miracle. They had heard 
His words. The mere story of what was said and done 
there, carried to many another place, had touched the 
heart and changed the life. But Capernaum was con- 

*Farrar: Life of Christ, I., pp. 174, 178. 



130 . CAPERNAUM. 

tent to behold and to listen, and perhaps to admire. 
But no enduring touch of awe fell on its busy, frivo- 
lous, pleasure-seeking life. There was no turning from 
sin, no seeking after God. 

But those who refuse to flee remain to warn. The 
words of Christ, "And thou, Capernaum, shalt thou be 
exalted unto heaven? Thou shalt go down unto 
Hades" (Matt. xi. 23), stood inscribed on the page of 
the gospel long before Capernaum had ceased to dream 
of increasing prosperity. After the blow had fallen 
in the Roman conquests of 70 and 135 a. d., Caper- 
naum, like tBe rest of Galilee, revived again, and the 
doom of extinction was for a time averted. We have 
references to it for ages afterwards. It was still a town 
in the days of Eusebius and Jerome. It was visited by 
Antoninus Martyr about 600 a. d. Bishop Arculf, 
who saw it 100 years later, says : "It lies on a narrow 
piece of ground between the mountain and the lake. 
On the shore towards the east it extends a long way, 
having the mountain on the north and the water on the 
south." Willibald found it inhabited in 722. Bro- 
cardus, writing near the end of the thirteenth century, 
describes it as "a humble village, containing scarcely 
seven fishermen's huts." Quaresimus, who visited Pal- 
estine about 1620, speaks of the site as covered with 
ruins, but it is open to question whether he did not 
mistake the site of this ancient city, and since his day 
all certainty as to the situation of Capernaum has dis- 
appeared. Most travellers believe that it is to be found 
at Tell-Hum, of which Ritter says : "The whole place, 
taken in connection with the great devastation of the 
fairest decorations by the tooth of time, dashed by the 
ripples of the Lake, and left to no other companion- 
ship than that of the waters, is calculated to awaken 
the saddest feelings in the mind of the traveller." But 
Robinson, both in his earlier and later researches, con- 
tends that the identification wth Tell-Hum is a mis- 
take. There are cities in Palestine from whose pre- 



THE FATE OF JERUSALEM. I3I 

cincts the tide of life has not yet retired, but from 
Capernaum it has long since passed away. Capernaum 
has gone down into Hades, and men are now unable 
to point with absolute certainty even to its grave. 

As might be expected, both Old and New Testaments 
to point with absolute certainty even to its grave. 

JERUSALEM. 

To those "who build up Zion with blood and Jeru- 
salem with iniquity," Micah declared: "Therefore 
shall Zion for your sakes be ploughed as a field, and 
Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the 
house as the high places of a forest" (iii. 12). The 
words may have been fulfilled during the Babylonish 
captivity, though it is most improbable that, in that 
time, when the remnant fled into Egypt, and the silence 
of death fell upon the land, any plough was driven 
over the site of the city of David. But, although there 
may have been a temporary fulfilment then, the eye 
which foresaw that, foresaw more. It must have looked 
on to the time of which that captivity and desolation 
were but the warning. The description of the rulers, 
too, as building up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with 
iniquity, never applied to men more fully than to those 
who shed the blood of the Holy and Just One with the 
avowed purpose of preserving the state from Roman 
encroachment, and who are painted on the pages of 
Josephus as men steeped in intrigue and unscrupulous- 
ness, whose almost daily pathway was one of robbery 
and murder. 

Taking the words, then, as prophetic of the great 
judgment on the Jewish people, is there anything in 
the present condition of the city to show that we have 
not mistaken their application ? The reply is that they 
are the best of all possible descriptions. There are 
three things mentioned. 



l$Z JERUSALEM, 



MOUNT MORIAH, 



"the mountain of the House/' whose top was levelled 
to make a site for the Temple, was to become as "the 
high places of a forest." This level space is, as will 
be readily understood, of very limited extent. Yet 
part of this limited area is covered with trees. "South 
of the Mosque of Omar there is a space 350 feet in ex- 
tent filled with lofty cypresses and other trees."* The 
mountain of the House, once covered with all that gave 
magnificence, and beauty, and sacredness to Jerusalem, 
has become like the high places of a forest. 
Then Jerusalem with its homes and palaces 

WAS TO BECOME HEAPS. 

The Holy City, though still inhabited, has only about 
one-seventh of its ancient population, and we have 
already referred to its ruined condition. We are pre- 
pared, therefore, for a confirmation of this prediction 
also; but it is startling to find that Ritter, in his de- 
scription of the present condition of the city, uncon- 
sciously repeats the words of the prediction. He says: 
"Entering the city, the piles of rubbish and the narrow 
streets compel us to recognize the fact that it is no 
longer a royal capital, princely in its magnificence, 
but a squalid town, which shows only too plainly its 
humiliation and poverty. As a recent traveller has 
truly and beautifully said, to him who does not see this 
city with the eye of faith, and who, amid all the strife 
which now divides the church, does not look forward 
to the glorious triumph which awaits it, Jerusalem is 
only a little eastern city covered with wrecks of past 
desolation, suffering under want and oppression, and 
from which the casual traveller hastens as rapidly as 
possible. But the classic ground, with its history ex- 

* Ritter's Palestine, IV., p. 121, 



(JERUSALEM. 133 

tending over thousands of years, remains, under all its 
rubbish and ruins, still classic* 

The remaining part of the prediction has been as 
wonderfully accomplished. Ziqn is even now 

PLOUGHED LIKE A FIELD. 

"Only the northern portion of Zion is included in the 
modern walls ; and this is occupied chiefly by the Jew- 
ish quarter, and by the great Armenian convent. . . 
Without the walls the level part of Zion is occupied by 
the Christian cemeteries, the house of Caiaphas (now 
an Armenian Convent), the Ccenaculum, or Muslim 
tomb of David, and the adjacent convent, formerly a 
Latin convent. The rest of the surface is now tilled, 
and the city of David has become a ploughed field! 
The eastern slope is likewise in part cultivated." f 
"Mount Zion," says Dr. Thomson, "is now for the 
most part a rough field. . . From the tomb of David 
I passed on through fields of ripe grain. The whole 
of the hill here is under cultivation, and presents a 
most literal fulfilment of Micah's prophecy: There- 
fore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field.' 
It is the only part of Jerusalem 'that is now, or ever 
has been ,ploughed.' "J 

There are also predictions regarding the sacred city 
in the New Testament, and, with a word on these,, we 
shall close our survey of the predictions which refer to 
the Land of Israel. Pointing to the Temple, our Lord 
said to His disciples, "See ye not all these things? 
Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one 
stone upon another that shall not be thrown down" 
(Matt. xxiv. 2). And again, "Jerusalem shall be trod- 
den down of the Gentiles, until the time of the Gen- 
tiles is fulfilled" (Luke xxi. 24). The first of these 
propTiecies foretells 

* Robinson Researches in Palestine, I., 264, 265. f Ibid., 98. 
X The Land and the Book, I., pp. 410, 539, 540. 



134 JERUSALEM. 

THE ANNIHILATION OF THE TEMPLE. 

It is generally agreed that the Gospel of Matthew was 
written some time between 50 and 60 a. d. In the 
year 70 the first stroke of the judgment fell. One of 
the very last incidents in that terrible siege was the de- 
struction of the Temple by fire. Josephus records that 
the burning of the sanctuary was contrary to the wishes 
of Titus, and was carried out in defiance of his ex- 
press commands. It might have been supposed, then, 
that a stay would have been put to any further work 
of destruction. The blackened walls might have been 
allowed to stand. But the word of the Lord is sure. 
Orders were issued to raze the entire city, with the ex- 
ception of one or two towers and a portion of the 
wall. These were spared to show to after times what 
the strength of Jerusalem had been, and what the 
Roman triumph meant. "Terentius Rufus," says Mil- 
man, "executed the work of desolation, of which he 
was left in charge, with unrelenting severity. Of all 
the stately city, the populous streets, the palaces of the 
Jewish Kings, the fortresses of her warriors, the Tem- 
ple of her God, not a ruin remained, except the tall 
towers of Phasaelis, Mariamne, and Hippicus, and part 
of the western wall, which was left as a defense for 
the Roman camp." * The work was completed on the 
suppression of the last rebellion under Barcochebas in 
135 a. D. The very foundations of the Temple seem 
then to have been torn up and the plough to have been 
passed over them. Before the Temple to Jupiter Capi- 
tolinus was reared upon its site by the Emperor Had- 
rian, there remained of the buildings to which our 
Lord that day pointed, not one stone upon another 
which was not thrown down. 
The remaining prophecy depicts the tKen 

* History of the Jews, II., pp. 377, 37a 



ATTEMPT TO REBUILD THE TEMPLE. 1 35 

FUTURE HISTORY OF JERUSALEM 

in one brief sentence. Every one is aware that the 
city, whose very name is so dear to the heart of the 
Jew, has been "trodden down." Nor need we search 
the pages of history to prove that its lords and pos- 
sessors have been the Gentiles. Never once, since the 
days of Hadrian, has the Jew ruled in the city of his 
fathers. There were times when it was death for him 
to enter it, or indeed to approach near enough to be- 
hold it from a distance. The presence of the Jew is 
barely tolerated even now, and the voice of one Arab 
woman is enough to frighten away bearded men from 
the place of wailing. The prophecy states further that 
the Gentile oppression will continue till judgment 
should also visit them, and "the time of the Gentiles" 
should be fulfilled. This prediction is remarkable for a 
deliberate and powerful attempt which was made to de- 
feat it, and so to disprove the claims of Jesus. The Em- 
peror Julian, in his attempt to dethrone Christianity 
and to reinstate the ancient paganism, hit upon the de- 
vice of restoring the Jews and rebuilding the Temple. 
We shall let Gibbon tell the story. "He resolved to 
erect, without delay, on the commanding eminence of 
Moriah, a stately temple, which might eclipse the 
splendor of the church of the Resurrection on the ad- 
jacent hill of Calvary; to establish an order of priests, 
whose interested zeal would detect the arts, and resist 
the ambition of their Christian rivals ; and to invite a 
numerous colony of Jews, whose stern fanaticism 
would be always prepared to second, and even to an- 
ticipate, the hostile measures of the Pagan govern- 
ment. Among the friends of the Emperor (if the 
names of Emperor and of friend are not incompatible), 
the first place was assigned by Julian himself to the 
virtuous and learned Alypius. The humanity of Aly- 
pius was tempered by severe justice and manly forti- 



I36 ATTEMPT TO REBUILD THE TEMPLE. 

tude; and, while he exercised his abilities in the civil 
administration of Britain, he imitated, in his poetical 
compositions, the harmony and softness of the odes of 
Sappho. This minister, to whom Julian communicated 
without reserve his most careless levities and his most 
serious counsels, received an extraordinary commis- 
sion to restore in its pristine beauty the Temple of 
Jerusalem ; and the diligence of Alypius required and 
obtained the strenuous support of the governor of Pal- 
estine. At the call of their great deliverer the Jews, 
from all the provinces of the Empire, assembled on the 
holy mountain of their fathers, and their insolent tri- 
umph alarmed and exasperated the Christian inhabi- 
tants of Jerusalem. The desire of rebuilding the Tem- 
ple has, in every age, been the ruling passion of the 
children of Israel. In this propitious moment the men 
forgot their avarice, and the women their delicacy ; 
spades and pickaxes of silver were provided by the 
vanity of the rich, and the rubbish was transported in 
mantles of silk and purple. Every purse was opened 
in liberal contributions, every hand claimed a share 
in the pious labor ; and the commands of a great mon- 
arch were executed by the enthusiasm of a whole 
people. 

"Yet, on this occasion, the joint efforts of power and 
enthusiasm were unsuccessful; and the ground of the 
Jewish Temple, which is now covered by a Mahometan 
Mosque, still continued to exhibit the same edifying 
spectacle of ruin and desolation. . . An earth- 
quake, a whirlwind, and a fiery eruption, which over- 
turned and scattered the new foundations of the Tem- 
ple, are attested, with some variations, by contempo- 
rary and respectable evidence. This public event is 
described by Ambrose, bishop of Milan, in an epistle 
to the Emperor Theodosius, which must provoke the 
severe animadversion of the Jews ; by the eloquent 
Chrysostom, who might appeal to the memory of the 



ATTEMPT TO REBUILD THE TEMPLE. I37 

elder part of his congregation at Antioch; and by 
Gregory Nazianzen, who published his account of the 
miracle before the expiration of the same year. The 
last of these writers has boldly declared that this pre- 
ternatural event was not disputed by the infidels; and 
his assertion, strange as it may seem, is confirmed by 
the unexceptionable testimony of Ammianus Marcel- 
linus. The philosophic soldier, who loved the virtues, 
without adopting the prejudices, of his master, has 
recorded, in his candid and judicious history of his 
own times, the extraordinary obstacles which inter- 
rupted the restoration of the Temple at Jerusalem. 
'Whilst Alypius, assisted by the governor of the prov- 
ince, urged with vigor and diligence the execution of 
the work, horrible balls of fire breaking out near the 
foundations, with frequent and reiterated attacks, ren- 
dered the place from time to time inaccessible to the 
scorched and blasted workmen ; and the victorious ele- 
ment continuing in this manner obstinately and reso- 
lutely bent, as it were, to drive them to a distance, the 
undertaking was abandoned !' " * 

Gibbon doubts the miracle. "At this important 
crisis/' he says truly enough, "any singular accident 
of nature would assume the appearance, and produce 
the effects, of a real prodigy." Michaelis ventured the 
suggestion that the flames may have been due to the 
ignition of foul air generated in the caverns by which 
the Temple area is known to be undermined. But, 
whatever the explanation may be, the fact is undoubted 
that the attempt was made to defeat the prophecy, and 
that the attempt failed. Neither the strength and res- 
olute determination of the Roman legions, nor the en- 
thusiasm and outpoured wealth of the Jews were able 
to bring this "word of the Lord" to nought. 

We conclude the present chapter with a glance at 
the testimony of 

* History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 

chap, xxiii. 



13.8 BABYLON. 

BABYLONIA, 

the scene not only of the captivity of the Jews, but 
also of the events which broke the unity of our race, 
and scattered its fragments over the earth. Of 
Babylon, the capital, 

THE MOST APPALLING DESOLATION 

was foretold "And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, 
the beauty of the Chaldaeans' excellency, shall be as 
when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah" (Isa. 
xiii. 19). At the beginning of our era the work of 
destruction had been begun, but was by no means 
perfected. When captured by Alexander, Babylon 
was still great, and it is said the conqueror intended 
to make it the capital of his dominions. Alexander's 
successors did not, however, carry out his intention. 
In 300 b. c. Seleucia was built, and the glory of 
Babylon was gradually transferred to her rival. 
About the beginning of the Christian era only a 
small part of Babylon was inhabited; and that 
chiefly, if not wholly, by Jews; the rest of the city 
was under cultivation. About the year 40 a. d. a 
persecution of the Jews under Caligula still further 
diminished the number of the inhabitants. Lucian, 
in the second century, predicts that its very site, 
like that of Nineveh, would soon be a subject of in- 
vestigation. A number of notices, by various writ- 
ers, enables us to trace the history of the desolation. 
Jerome, writing about the beginning of the fourth 
century, says that the site of Babylon was made into 
a hunting-ground for the Persian Kings ; and Cyril 
of Alexandria, about 412, mentions that the canals from 
the Euphrates had been filled up, and that the city was 
then little better than a marsh. In 460 Theodoret 
remarks that it was no longer inhabited by either 
Assyrians or Chaldaeans, and that only a few Jews 
had their habitations scattered among the ruins. 



ITS DESOLATION. 139 

Ibn Haukal, in 917, speaks of Babel as a small vil- 
lage, and says that scarcely any remains of Babylon 
were to be seen; and when, in the twelfth century, 
Benjamin of Tudela passed through Chaldsea, the 
ancient capital was an utter desolation, and the ruins 
of Nebuchadnezzar's palace were inaccessible, owing 
to the number of scorpions and serpents by which 
they were infested 

The desolation, it was foretold, should be 

UTTER AND LASTING : 

"It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be 
dwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall 
the Arabian pitch tent there ; neither shall the shep- 
herds make their flocks to lie down there" (Isa. xiii. 
20). We have seen how the ocean of human life 
eradually receded from this vast city, onc,e the home 
of countless multitudes. Wave after wave rushed 
back from the retiring waters, as if resolved to cling 
to the ancient habitations ; but the hand of doom was 
mightier, and every remnant of its once busy, joyous, 
life has long since passed away. Hillah, six miles 
southwest of Babylon, which marks the site of the 
ancient town where the plebeians dwelt apart, has a 
population of 6,000; but not one human dwelling 
rests upon the site of the ancient city — the glory of 
the Chaldaeans' excellency. The Bedouin, though he 
pastures his flocks in the immediate neighbourhood, 
regards the ruins themselves with superstitious 
dread, and the latter part of the prediction is also 
fulfilled to the very letter. The tents of the Arabs 
are freely pitched on the Chaldaean plains, but not 
one of them is pitched amid the ruins of Babylon. 
Other cities named in prophecy have become folds 
for flocks; but no shepherd makes his flocks to lie 
down among the mounds of ancient Babylon. 
Ruined cities frequently afford in the remnants of 



140 BABYLON. 

their walls protection for flock and shepherd of 
which advantage is eagerly taken. But "on the 
actual ruins of Babylon the Arabian neither pitches 
his tent nor pastures his flocks — in the first place, 
because the nitrous soil produces no pasture to 
tempt him ; and secondly, because an evil reputation 
attaches to the entire site, which is thought to be 
the haunt of evil spirits. "* 

But a deeper humiliation was to be inflicted. 
Something is said about those who should dwell 
within its precincts. The 

TENANTS 

of the ruined city are described. "But wild beasts 
of the desert shall lie there ; and their houses shall 
be full of doleful creatures; and ostriches shall dwell 
there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wolves 
shall cry in their castles, and jackals in the pleasant 
palaces" (Isa. xiii. 21, 22). This feature of the deso- 
lation has been noted by every traveller. In carry- 
ing excavations into the great mound of Babil, Lay- 
ard came upon some coffins containing skeletons. 
"A foul and unbearable stench," he says, "issued 
from those loathsome remains, and from the pas- 
sages, which had become the dens of wild beasts, 
which had worked their way into them from above." 
And the "doleful creatures are not wanting." "Owls 
start from the scanty thickets, and the foul jackal 
skulks through the furrows." "The mound was full 
of large holes; we entered some of them, and found 
them strewed with the carcases and skeletons of 
animals recently killed."t Speaking of the Birs 
Nimroud, Heeren says, "Its recesses are inhabited 
by lions, three being quietly basking on its heights 
when Porter approached it, and, scarcely intimidated 

* Rawlinson, Egypt and Babylon, p. 206. f Keppel. 



ITS DESOLATION. I4I 

by the cries of the Arabs, gradually and slowly de- 
scended into the plain." Then 

THE ASPECT 

the place should wear was described while it was 
yet in its glory: "Babylon shall become heaps" (Jer. 
li. 37). Were it not that we are in the midst of sur- 
passing wonders, it would be in the highest degree 
astonishing to mark how travellers are here com- 
pelled to use the very words of Scripture. "The 
wide extent" says one, "of mounds and vestiges of 
buildings must arrest the attention of every be- 
holder ; who, at the same time, will not fail to remark 
how little the shapeless heaps can suggest in any de- 
eree either the nature or object of the structures of 
which they are the wrecks. "* "The ruins," remarks 
another, "are mounds formed by the decomposition 
of buildings, channelled and furrowed by the 
weather, and strewed with pieces of brick, bitumen, 
and pottery. . . I imagined I should have said, 
'Here were the walls, and such must have been the 
extent of the area ; there stood the palace ; and this 
most assuredly was the temple of Belus.' I was 
completely deceived; instead of a few insulated 
mounds, I found the whole face of the country cov- 
ered with vestiges of buildings, in some places con- 
sisting of brick walls surprisingly fresh, in others, 
merely of a vast succession of mounds of rubbish of 
such indeterminate figures, variety, and extent, as to 
involve the person who should have formed any 
theory in inextricable confusion. "t It is impossible 
to find, in the whole range of language, a term which 
will more fitly describe the present condition of the 
city than that which is used in the prophecy. Babylon 
has become heaps. 

Other details are added. "A curious feature in the 

* Fraser, Mesopotamia and Assyria, f Rich. 



142 BABYLON. 

prophecies," says Professor Rawlinson, "is the ap- 
parent contradiction that exists between two sets of 
statements contained in them, one of which attri- 
butes the desolation of Babylon to the action of 
water, while the other represents the water as 'dried 
up/ and the site as cursed with drought and barren- 
ness. To the former class belong the statements of 
Isaiah: 'I will also make it a possession for the 
bittern, and pools of water' (xiv. 23) ; and 'the cor- 
morant (pelican?), and the bittern shall possess it' 
(xxxiv. 11); together with the following passage of 
Jeremiah, 'The sea is come up upon Babylon; she is 
covered with the multitude of the waves thereof (li. 
42) ; to the latter such declarations as the subjoined, 
A drought is upon her waters, and they shall be 
dried up' (Jer. 1. 38) , 'I will dry up her sea' (li. 36) ; 
'Her cities are a desolation, a dry land and a desert' 
(1. 12) ; 'Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin 
daughter of Babylon' " (Isa. xlvii. 1). 

"But this antithesis, this paradox, is exactly in ac- 
cordance with the condition of things which travel- 
lers note as to this day attaching to the site. The 
dry, arid aspect of the ruins, of the vast mounds 
which cover the greater buildings, and even of the 
lesser elevations which spread far into the plain at 
their base, receives continual notice. 'The whole 
surface of the mounds appears to the eye/ says Ker 
Porter, 'nothing but vast irregular hills of earth, . 
. . while the foot at every step sinks into the loose 
dust and rubbish.' And again, 'Every spot of ground 
in sight was totally barren. . . . It is an old 
adage that, where a curse has fallen, grass will never 
grow. In like manner the decomposing materials of 
a Babylonian structure doom the earth on which 
they perish to an everlasting sterility.' 'On all sides/ 
says Sir Austen Layard, 'fragments of glass, marble, 
pottery, and inscribed brick are mingled with that pecu- 
liar nitrous and blanched soil which, bred from the 



ITS DESOLATION. I43 

remains of ancient habitations, checks or destroys vege- 
tation, and renders the site of Babylon a naked and 
hideous waste' 

"On the other hand, the neglect of the embank- 
ments and canals which anciently controlled the 
waters of the Euphrates, and made them a defence 
and not a danger, has consigned great part of what 
was anciently Babylon to the continual invasion of 
floods, which, stagnating in the lower grounds, have 
converted large tracts once included within the walls 
of the city into lakes, pools, and marshes/'* 

And, not only have the prophecies pictured the 
aspect of Babylon, they have also described 

THE PROCESS 

by which its edifices have been turned into dust. 
"Cast her up as heaps/' cries the prophet to the men 
of the then far-distant future — "cast her up as heaps, 
and destroy her utterly: let nothing of her be left" 
(Jer. 1. 26). The tearing down of the ruins has been 
continued for centuries. The bricks, even at this 
late date, are so excellent in quality, that the shape 
of the mounds is being continually altered by the ex- 
cavations which are made for them. "El Kasr, when 
visited by Rich, was nearly a square of seven hun- 
dred yards in length and breadth. But even in the 
seven years, which intervened between this visit and 
that of Porter, the everlasting digging and carrying 
azvay of the bricks had been sufficient to change its 
shape. What then must have been its size twenty 
centuries before! . . . About twenty-four hun- 
dred feet from Kasr is Amram Hill. The whole of 
this stupendous heap is broken like that of the Kasr 
into deep caverneS ravines and long winding fur- 
rows, from the number of bricks that have been 
taken away/'f "To this day, 7 ' says Layard, "there 

* Egypt and Babylon, pp. 207-209. fHeeren. 



144 BABYLON. 

are men who have no other trade than that of gath- 
ering bricks from this vast heap, and taking them for 
sale to the neighbouring towns and villages, and even 
to Baghdad. There is scarcely a house in Hillah 
which is not built of them." 

And the Scripture takes us further still. It foretells 
that, while her mounds should be "cast up as heaps" 
in the search for building material, 

STONES SHOULD BE DESTROYED. 

"There is one fact," says Mr. Rassam, "connected 
with the destruction of Babylon and the marvellous 
fulfilment of prophecy which struck me more than 
anything else, which fact seems never to have been 
noticed by any traveller, and that is the non-exis- 
tence in the several modern buildings in the neigh- 
bourhood of Babylon of any sign of stone which had 
been dug up from its ancient ruins. It seems that, 
in digging for old materials, the Arabs used the 
bricks for building purposes, but always burnt the 
stone thus discovered for lime, which fact wonder- 
fully fulfils the Divine words of Jeremiah, namely: 
'And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, 
nor a stone for foundations : but thou shalt be des- 
olate for ever, saith the Lord' (Jer. li. 26)." When 
we reflect that these stones were brought from far 
(for no stone is furnished by the vast plain of 
Babylonia), and must have been in a special degree 
the pride of the great city, we understand the signi- 
ficance of the doom. All her beauty and magnifi- 
cence were to perish without memorial. 

We cannot conclude this hurried notice of Baby- 
lon, without remarking, what is certainly not the 
least surprising of its testimonies to the Scripture — 
the fulfillment of the words : "Behold, I am against 
thee, O destroying mountain, saith the Lord, which 
destroy eth all the earth ; and I will stretch out mine 



ITS DESOLATION. 145 

hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, 
and will make thee 

A BURNT MOUNTAIN^ 



(Jer. li. 25). Babylonia is an immense plain in which 
no natural mountain or hill has ever stood. And yet 
Babylon must have presented some feature which 
eave the epithet, "destroying mountain," propriety 
and force If there existed some stupendous struc- 
ture which was in a peculiar way the confidence of 
this people, the figure would be explained at once. 
If around and upon such a height the temples of 
their deities were placed, and if the height itself was 
consecrated by the most ancient and sacred tradi- 
tions, we could understand why the threat against the 
city and the nation should be addressed to this, and 
why it should bear some special mark of His dis- 
pleasure, who will not give His glory to another, 
nor His praise to graven images. An inscription of 
Nebuchadnezzar's has been found which relates how 
he repaired and splendidly adorned what he names 
"the Tower of the seven stages, the Eternal House, 
the. Temple of the seven luminaries of the Earth." 
"The discovery of this inscription," says Lenor- 
mant, "points out to us, among the ruins still lift- 
ing their heads around the site of ancent Babylon, 
the still gigantic remains of a monument which, in 
the days of Nebuchadnezzar, was believed to be the 
tower of Babel. It is this that the inhabitants of 
the country still call 'Birs Nimrod' ('the Tower of 
Nimrod'), and in the midst of the plains it still looks 
like a mountain. 3 ' It was described by Herodotus. 
There was, first of all, ''a tower of solid masonry, a 
furlong in length and breadth." Upon this, "was 
raised a second tower, and on that a third, and so on 
up to eight. The ascent to the top is on the outside, 
by a path which winds round all the towers. When 



I46 BABYLON. 

one is about half-way up, one finds a resting-place 
and seats where persons are wont to sit some time 
on their way to the summit." This vast structure 
was dedicated to Bel, the chief deity of the Babylon- 
ians, and the supposed favor of this deity gave Baby- 
lon a sacredness even in the estimation of the neigh- 
bouring nations. It is named in Assyrian inscriptions 
"the dwelling-place of Bel." "The earth about the 
hill is now clear, but is again surrounded by walls 
which form an oblong square, enclosing numerous 
heaps of rubbish, probably once the dwellings of the 
inferior deities, or of the priests and officers of the 
Temple. The appearance of the tower of Nimrod 
is sublime even in its ruin. Clouds play round its 
summit."* Recall now the words, "I will roll thee 
down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt 
mountain," and place by the side of them these, "It 
is rent from the top nearly half-way to the bottom ; 
and at its foot lay several unshapen masses of fine 
brickwork, still bearing traces of a violent fire, 
which has given them a vitrified appearance, whence 
it has been conjectured that it has been struck by 
lightning. The appearance of the hill on the eastern 
side evidently shows that this enormous mass has 
been reduced more than half."* It has been rolled 
down from the rocks, and been made a burnt moun- 
tain ! 

We glance, in conclusion, at Chaldsea, the country 
of which Babylon was the mighty capital. The 
Chaldaeans had spoiled many nations, and many 
thrones had gone down before them. But a day of 
vengeance was to come. She was to be 

THE PREY OF MANY NATIONS. 

The judgment was recorded : "Many nations and 
great kings shall serve themselves of them also: and 

* Heeren. 



THE PREY OF MANY NATIONS. I47 

I will recompense them according to their deeds" 
(Jer. xxv. 14). The following brief sketch of their 
history will show how the words were kept. Baby- 
lonia was the prey first of the Medes and the Per- 
sians; then, about three hundred years before the 
time of our Lord, of the Macedonians under Alex- 
ander and his successors ; then of the Parthians ; and 
afterwards, from time to time, of the Romans. For 
two centuries, from 636 a. d., it was held by the 
Arabs. In 1218 it was desolated by the Tartars 
under Zingis. "From the Caspian to the Indus they 
ruined a tract of many hundred miles, which was 
adorned with the habitations and labours of mankind ; 
and five centuries have not been sufficient to repair 
the ravages of four years."* For a time the country 
was in the hands of the assassins, who were over- 
thrown and succeeded by Holagou Khan, the grand- 
son of Zingis, in 1258. "I shall not enumerate," says 
Gibbon, "the crowd of sultans, emirs, and atabeks 
whom he trampled into dust." In 1380 it was con- 
quered by Tamerlane, who erected on the ruins of 
Baghdad a pyramid of ninety thousand heads. Since 
then it has passed from the grasp of one fierce race 
into that of another. The prophecy is simply the 
summary of Chaldaea's history: "Many nations and 
great kings shall serve themselves of them also : and 
I will recompense them according to their deeds." 
It was also written that all should find 

AN ABUNDANT SPOIL. 

"All that spoil her shall be satisfied" (Jer. 1. 10). 
The teeming riches of the soil and the position of the 
country, which forced upon it a chief share in the 
world's commerce, seemed to bid defiance to the 
ravages of man. No sooner did a fresh horde of con- 
querors settle down upon the land than it heaped its 

* Gibbon. 



I48 BABYLON— THE PREDICTED PUNISHMENT. 

treasure upon them till they too were ready for the 
spoiler. Gibbon has painted the joy of the Arabs at 
their sudden enrichment here in 636, little thinking 
how every word he penned was bowing" before the 
prediction, "All that spoil her shall be satisfied." 
"The naked robbers of the desert," he says, "were 
suddenly enriched beyond the measure of their hope 
or knowledge. Each chamber revealed a new treas- 
ure, secreted with art, or ostentatiously displayed; 
the gold and silver, the various wardrobes and 
precious furniture surpassed (says Abulfeda) the 
estimate of fancy or of numbers; and another his- 
torian defines the untold and almost infinite mass by 
the fabulous computation of three thousands of 
thousands of thousands of pieces of gold." 

There was, last of all, a prophecy which stood in 
the most complete contradiction to the character of 
the country for centuries after the beginning of the 
Christian era. 

The entire 

LAND WAS TO BE A DESOLATION. 

Among the most fertile and populous of all coun- 
tries, it was to be among the most barren and deso- 
late. "How is the hammer of the whole earth cut 
asunder and broken! how is Babylon become a des- 
olation among the nations" (Jer. 1. 23) ! "Her 
cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, 
a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth any 
son of man pass thereby" (Jer. li. 43). The wealth 
of the soil may be estimated from the fact that, 
though Babylonia and Assyria formed only a ninth 
part of the Persian dominions, they contributed to- 
p-ether one-third of the entire revenue of the empire. 
The country, consisting of one enormous plain, lay 
in the embrace of two great rivers, the Tigris and 
the Euphrates. By a most elaborate system of 



THE DOOM OF BABYLON ACCOMPLISHED. I49 

canals the enriching waters were spread over the 
whole land. The result was seen in a fertility so 
astonishing that Herodotus was afraid to tell all he 
knew lest he should be accused of exaggeratioa 
The crop of corn ranges, he tells us, between two 
and three hundredfold. "The blade of the wheat- 
plant and barley-plant is often four fingers in 
breadth. As for the millet and the sesame, I shall 
not say to what height they grow, though within my 
own knowledge ; for I am not ignorant that what I 
have already written concerning the fruitfulness of 
Babylonia must seem incredible to those who havQ 
never visited the country." 

"Thus favored by nature," writes Heeren, "this coun- 
try necessarily became the central point where the 
merchants of nearly all the nations of the civilized 
world assembled ; and such we are informed by history 
it remained as long as the international commerce of 
Asia flourished. Neither the devastating sword of 
the conquering nations, nor the heavy yoke of Asia- 
tic despotism could tarnish, though for a time they 
might dim, its splendour. It was only when the Eu- 
ropeans found a new route to India across the ocean 
and converted the great commerce of the world from 
a land trade to a sea trade, that the royal city on 
the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates began to 
decline. Then, deprived of its commerce, it fell a 
victim to the two-fold oppression of anarchy and 
despotism, and sank to its original state — a stinking 
morass and a barren steppe."* "The whole plain is 
thickly covered with traces of former habitations. 
Scarcely, indeed, is there a single rood of ground 
which does not exhibit some fragment of brick, or 
tile, or glass, or sepulchral urn to tell that man has 
lived in a region which now presents to the eye but 
one vast expanse of arid desert; a howling wilder- 

* Heeren. 



150 THE DOOM OF BABYLON ACCOMPLISHED. 

ness, where the only evidence that he still exists is 
afforded by the black Bedouin tent, or the wander- 
ing camel which here and there dots its dreary sur- 
face/'* We have seen how slowly the doom of Baby- 
lon was accomplished, and that it is being perfected 
even now ; and it is only within the last six hundred 
years that this judgment has fallen upon Chaldsea, 
and that her cities have become "a desolation, a dry 
land, and a wilderness/' What remains as yet un- 
fulfilled will also be accomplished. The time will 
come when the silence of death will fall and remain 
unbroken: when no man will dwell there nor an^ 
son of man pass thereby. 

Place these prophetic pictures, the features of 
which we have now looked at in detail — place them 
for a moment in full view. Remember that we are 
dealing with undoubted predictions, and that there 
is no room for the supposition that they were writ- 
ten after, and not before, the event. Reflect that 
Judea and her cities, that Babylon and the land of 
which she was once the capital and the glory, are 
fully and minutely described as they were after- 
wards to be, and that the words of the historian and 
the traveller merely repeat the language of the 
prophets. Let us deal with this fact as we should 
with any other, and shall we not own that' doubts 
are dispelled and convictions deepened? God is not 
a myth, or a dream. He is, and He has spoken with 
us. His words are remembered and fulfilled; and, 
if every word spoken in judgment is accomplished, 
let us rejoice that His covenant is also "remembered 
for ever." We can trust Him utterly. "The Lord 
is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear? 
The Lord is the strength of my life ; of whom shall I 
be afraid?" 

* Fraser. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

A PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLD'S ENTIRE 

HISTORY. 

We have now travelled, in our survey of the pic- 
tures drawn by the pen of prophecy, from Egypt to 
Babylon, and have touched upon almost the whole 
area covered by sacred story. Everywhere, in the 
nationalities which remain as well as in those which 
have passed away, we have met with marvels which 
form an array of evidence in favor of the old belief 
regarding the words of Scripture, the value of which 
it would be hard to over-estimate. 

But, as we read the story of the past, our attention 
is attracted not only to lands and peoples. There 
are also great movements which more properly form 
the material of history, and give to it unity and 
interest. The story of peoples becomes in this case 
the history of man. We observe the great empires 
of the ancient world sweeping away the barriers 
which separated race from race, and welding to- 
gether ever more perfectly widely-scattered nation- 
alities. Each empire, which succeeds to the coveted 
dominion, succeeds also to the work of uniting what 
the past had scattered and the ages had more and more 
widely sundered. We have now to notice that these de- 
velopments did not escape the observation of the 
thought which breathes in this Word, and that the 
whole of them have been mapped out and described. 



152 PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLDS HISTORY. 

The book of Daniel, with which we have now to 
deal, has been one of the greatest stumbling-blocks 
in the path of those who have difficulty in believing 
the miraculous. It consequently holds quite a sin- 
gular place in the story of the attacks which have 
been made upon the authenticity and the inspiration 
of the Scriptures. It was to it that Porphyry first 
applied the principles and methods of what has been 
called "the higher criticism." Many of the prophe- 
cies had been so strikingly fulfilled that, to evade 
their force, they were set down as history, and the 
date of the composition of the book was fixed at a 
point from which the predictions seemed to become 
less distinct and clear. When the modern school 
sprang into being, it was against Daniel that the 
attack was again pressed with the greatest deter- 
mination and assurance. The mounds raised in the 
former siege still remained. These were now seized 
and crowned with all the appliances of modern war- 
fare. The result has been, in the estimation of the 
critics, one of the most signal and satisfactory kind. 
The demonstration that Daniel neither penned nor 
saw the book which has so long claimed him for its 
author, has been, says Bunsen, "one of the finest 
triumphs and most useful achievements of modern 
criticism."* 

But the triumph did not meet with universal 
recognitioa The result was objected to on various 
grounds. For one thing, the moral sense was out- 
raged. It has been often urged that the Scriptures 
must either be received as the Word of God or be 
held to be the most unblushing and blasphemous of 
falsehoods; and that, if the contentions of "the 
critics" were admitted, there would be left us neithet 
moral books nor, in the writers of them, honest men. 
But while fully admitting that, in their view, the 

* God in History, I., p. 191. 



NEBUCHADNEZZAR S DREAM. 1 53 

writer of Daniel was not honest, the critics main- 
tained that he should nevertheless be regarded as 
admirable ! Bunsen speaks of him as "a pious man" 
and "the pious author/' "At this juncture/' he says, 
"a pious man resolved to avail himself of the tradi- 
tions regarding Daniel, and apply them to the cir- 
cumstances of his own time, and, in the name of that 
prophet, proclaim words of admonition and proph- 
ecy to the faithful around him."* The necessities 
of the critical position must surely be painfully great 
when honorable men have to justify supposed pious 
frauds, the like of which, were they to disgrace the 
history of their own times, they would visit with the 
most unqualified condemnation and scorn. 

The verdict was doubted, however, upon other 
grounds as well. Historians felt that the picture 
given of the times was such as could have sprung 
only from a personal and intimate acquaintance with 
them. Heeren gladly availed himself of the light 
thrown by the book upon the arrangements of the 
Babylonian-Chaldsean empire; and even Schlosser, 
thoroughly identified though he was with the crit- 
ical school, was compelled to say: "In Daniel we 
think we possess the only remains of the modes of 
thought and the manners of the Babylonian period." 
The inferences of the historians have now been com- 
pletely vindicated by the advance of modern dis- 
covery. The inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar have 
been read ; we are now, by the aid of contemporary 
documents, brought face to face with the times in 
which he lived; and these are the times and the 
man with whom we have been long familiar in the 
pages of Daniel, "It is curious to notice," says Len- 
ormant,t "that the three parts composing the great 
work on magic, of which Sir Henry Rawlinson has 
found the remains, correspond exactly to the three 

* God in History, i., p. 192. f Chaldcean Magic, p. 14. 



154 PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLD S HISTORY. 

classes of Cfialdsean doctors which Daniel enum- 
erates. The further we advance in the knowledge 
of the cuneiform texts, the greater does the necessity- 
appear of reversing the condemnation much too pre- 
maturely pronounced by the German exegetical school 
against the writings of the fourth of the greater 
prophets." 

We now propose to go further than any confirma- 
tion of the historical character of the book can pos- 
sibly carry us. It contains prophecies which pro- 
fessed to unveil the then 

FAR-OFF FUTURE. 

In one of them we have a forecast of the world's 
entire history, brief, indeed, but clear and well-de- 
fined; its grand epochs are carefully marked, their 
nature distinguished, their number and the order of 
their occurrence fixed. Have the more than two 
thousand years which have passed since the prophet 
wrote, anything to say as to whether these are the 
words of God ? What stamp has Time, the unerring 
and impartial judge of every such pretension, set 
upon this book? 

That is the question: let us now turn to the 
answer. In the last days of the Assyrian Empire, 
Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, had proclaimed him- 
self independent, and, in conjunction with the 
Medes, had crushed what remained of the Assyrian 
power by the capture of Nineveh. Necho, king of 
Egypt, had meanwhile possessed himself of the 
western dominions of Assyria, and was engaged in 
the siege of Carchemish on the Euphrates. Nabo- 
polassar sent his son Nebuchadnezzar to sweep back 
the Egyptian hosta Necho received a crushing de- 
feat under the walls of Carchemish, and the entire 
territory from the Euphrates to the borders of Egypt 
was the reward of the victory. Nebuchadnezzar fol- 



tKZ TTVZ EMPIRES €7 PROPHECY^ I55 

lowed hard upon the heels of the retreating foe, and 
was engaged in the siege of Pelusium when the tid- 
ings reached him of his father's death. Making 
a hasty peace with Necho, he sped back to Babylon 
to assume possession of the kingdom. He ascended 
the throne without opposition, and now in this the 
second year of his reign his sway was fully estab- 
lished alike over the old conquests and the new. 

But the warrior's spirit cannot rest. The power 
he holds is not something to be enjoyed ; it is some- 
thing to be used; it is a means, and not an end. 
He has retired to rest, but the busy brain pursues its 
all-absorbing fancy. Whither will he turn his arms? 
and in what way may he most effectually break the 
power he means to attack? When he and his stand 
alone in the earth, what then? The dominion has 
returned again to Babylon, the ancient mistress of 
the kingdoms; but will it remain here? Sleep at 
last seals the senses, but from the unresting sea of 
thought wave after wave is flung. In dreams he still 
pursues ambition's path. The ever changing fancies 
sweep through the soul in their swift, unending 
flight; but at last their aimless career is checked, 
and, built out of the dreamer's "thoughts upon his 
bed," a vision rises, clear, consistent, terrible. The 
conqueror's spirit is bowed with awe ; and when he 
has gazed and pondered, the vision fades and disap- 
pears. The unbridled thoughts sweep over his soul 
again, and blur, though they cannot efface, the deep 
impression of the dream. 

This dream was to bear upon it the stamp that it 
was sent from God, and so, though it was given to 
the king, his lips were not permitted to tell it. The 
vision was to be related to him by one whose words, 
awakening his own slumbering recollection, were to 
be to him a demonstration of the interpreter's pro- 
phetic mission. The Babylonian diviners were as- 
tonished by the monarch's demand not only to fur- 



I56 PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. 

nish an interpretation, but also to make known a 
forgotten dream. The story of how Daniel saved 
them, as well as his companions and himself, from 
destruction has been familiar to us from the days of 
our childhood. He begged for time. He betook 
himself to prayer ; and he did not plead in vain. The 
next morning saw him stand in the king's presence. 
He reminded Nebuchadnezzar how he had seen a 
cplossal image whose "brightness was excellent" and 
whose "form was terrible." He had then marked 
that though the image was a unity, it was construct- 
ed of various materials. The head was of gold, the 
arms and the breast of silver, the belly and the 
haunches of brass, the legs of iron, and the feet and 
toes partly of iron, and partly of that which, though 
in appearance like iron, has nothing of its strength 
or power of resistance — brittle earthenware. Then 
there was a change. This image, with its terrible- 
ness and splendour, was crushed beneath an over- 
whelming vengeance. He had seen a stone cut out 
of the mountain side (the emblem of the Eternal, 
Patient, Strength) ; he had seen it cut out and fash- 
ioned without hands. And now this stone, miracu- 
lous in its origin, fell upon the toes of the image and 
crushed and ground it to powder, till the iron, ancTthe 
clay, and the brass, and the silver, and the gold became 
as "the. chaff of the summer threshing-floors, and the 
wind carried them away that no place was found for 
them, and the stone that smote the image became a 
great mountain, and filled the whole earth" (Dan. ii. 

35). 

That was the Divine parable. The colossal image, 

witk its splendour and terribleness, was a fitting emblem 
of the human sovereignty which men have not only 
feared, but have also regarded with enthusiastic ad- 
miration. In the 7th chapter of Daniel we have a par- 
allel vision. The same empires pass before the proph- 
et's sight; but there they are represented as beasts of 



THE CHARACTER OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 1 57 

prey. Grotius has pointed out that the imagery of the 
visions is varied in accordance with the character of 
the men to whom they are sent. The prophet, with a 
fieart which bleeds for human woe, sees the kingdoms 
as they pass on through blood and suffering ; they arise 
to kill and to devour. He, on the other hand, whose 
heart is fired with the lust of glory, sees only the real- 
ized ideal of human ambition — a god-like man and 
things that are precious and strong — fine gold and sil- 
ver and Brass and iron. 

But we have more than the symbolism of the vision : 
the parable is fully explained. The image, which in its 
completeness represents the entire sovereignty of man 
over his fellows, is divided into four parts. The first, 
the head of gold, is identified with the Babylonian em- 
pire (Daniel ii. 38). After this there was to arise 
"another kingdom inferior to" the first, "and another 
third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all 
the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as 
iron." This was to endure in its latter stage of sub- 
divtsion till the hour of vengeance should have struck, 
and "the God of heaven" have "set up a kingdom 
which shall never be destroyed" (ii. 39, 40, 44). Num- 
bered in this way, and the first of the kingdoms being 
so plainly designated, the student of history can find 
no difficulty in the interpretation. But we have every 
needed help furnished by the Scripture itself. In an- 
other vision the second and third kingdoms are iden- 
tified respectively with the empire of Persia and the 
empire of Greece ^(Dan. viii. 20, 21). The fourth 
kingdom, though more fully described than any other, 
is not named; but ere the Scripture story is finished, 
this kingdom too stands plainly before us. We open 
the New Testament and find the Roman power bearing 
rule in Judea. As to "the stone," the figure is applied 
to Christ again and again, and His own words will be 
remembered : "Did ye never read in the Scriptures, 
'The stone, which the builders rejected, the same was 



I58 PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THB WORLD'S HISTORY". 

made the head of the corner V . . he that falleth 011 
this stone shall be broken to pieces; but, on whomso- 
ever it shall fall, it will scatter him as dust" (R. V. 
Matt. xxi. 42, 44). These last words are an evident 
reference to Dan. ii. 35. 

The four empires are therefore determined by the 
Scripture itself. They are the Babylonian, the Persian, 
the Grecian, and the Roman. The fifth is the dominio.i 
of Christ. Dealing only with fulfilled prophecy, we do 
not enter upon the latter part of the prediction; and 
confining ourselves to the prophecies fulfilled at or 
since the beginning of the Christian era, there is much 
of the earlier which also lies outside of range. I shall 
simply point in passing to what everyone knows to be 
true, that the dominions named succeeded each other 
in this very order. The Babylonian power was fol- 
lowed by the Persian under Cyrus ; this was over- 
turned by the Grecian under Alexander ; and the Gre- 
cian was in like manner supplanted by the Roman. 
But the marvels of this prophecy are not confined to 
that portion of it whose accomplishment lay nearest to 
the prophet's time. For example, the Roman was to be 

THE LAST 

of the great world-empires. There was to be no 
other. It is to endure in its subdivision till the 
kingdom of God is established in the earth. It must 
be admitted that this part of the prophetic picture is 
striking, if not startling. Had the writer lived at 
the beginning of our era and seen the Roman power 
at the summit of its glory, it would still be inexpli- 
cable on any natural grounds how the notion could 
have occurred to him that this should be the last of 
the dominions of man. There had been other human 
dominions before it ; why, then, should there not be 
also other human dominions after it? If experience 
had been asked to guess the secreU of the future, tht 



THE CHARACTER OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 1 59 

answer would certainly have been that the revolu- 
tions of the past would be repeated in the time that 
was then to come. As the Babylonian dominion 
went down before the Persian, the Persian before 
the Greek, the Greek before the Roman, so the 
Roman might also with certainty have been expect- 
ed to pass on the sceptre to some other. But what 
of the fact? What have the nineteen centuries 
which have elapsed since the beginning of the Chris- 
tian era to say regarding the prediction ? The man 
who then received this as the word of God looked 
down the ages and said there would be no other 
world-dominion of man ; and we who now look back 
through these ages have to confess that there has 
been no other. The fierce, rude warriors of the 
north poured like a flood against the western empire 
in the fifth century, but the dominion of the world 
was not given to them. In the seventh century the 
Arab-hordes, sweeping out from the desert, as- 
saulted the empire on the East. They assaulted it 
also on the West, and it seemed for a time as if the 
Caliphs might ascend the throne of the Caesars. But 
the storm spent its strength, and the Arab had not been 
made the heir of the Roman. Tartars and Turks swept 
over the East. They knocked loudly at the gates of 
the West, and men trembled lest the desolation which 
had followed in their train might overspread Christen- 
dom as well; but to neither was the dominion given. 
The dream of universal empire has fired the breast of 
king and warrior, and among them one of the mightiest 
geniuses whose hand has ever grasped the sword. But 
not even to Napoleon was it given to weld once more 
the broken fragments of the Roman Empire into one. 
There has been, as this prophecy said there should be, 
a fourth dominion of man ; 

AND THERE HAS BEEN NO OTHER. 

Is it not strange that, during these last 1500 years, in 



l6o PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLDS HISTORY. 

which the world has been brought more together than 
it ever was before and has been waiting, as it were, to 
hail the conqueror and give him a sway fuller than 
man has ever yet wielded, no one has seized upon the 
prize? And is it not still more strange than these 
words should have told us this, and said that the world 
should look and wait, but that there should be no 
other till He should come whose right it is to reign? 
Go no further than this — place only these things to- 
gether, and then say whether any man need ask where 
he may find the word of the living God, or where he 
may obtain the conviction that His hand has been 
working through all those changes and hastening the 
salvation for which the whole earth cries. 
But the prophecy abounds with marvels. 

THE CHARACTER OF THE FOURTH KINGDOM 

is fully described. The Roman empire was the furthest 
removed from the prophet's time and yet it is more 
clearly depicted than any of the others. To begin with 
he is struck by its 

SINGULARITY. 

In the vision given to the prophet himself, "the fourth 
beast was diverse from all the beasts that were before 
it" (vii. 7). The marked difference between the 
Roman empire and those which preceded it is again 
referred to. It is spoken of as "diverse from all of 
them" (vii. 19). The full meaning of those words we 
shall afterwards see. Meanwhile it may be enough to 
say that in every aspect Rome was diverse from each 
of the dominions which preceded it. It was an utterly 
new development in history. Formerly attention was 
fixed upon conquerors and kings whose will was 
obeyed and whose plans were executed by the peoples 
whom they ruled and led. But here our attention is 
fixed not upon the one but upon the many. It is the 



THE CHARACTER OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. l6l 

people who plan and triumph.. Their dominion does 
not perish, nor is even their progress arrested, because 
of the fall of their leaders. 

The Roman empire stands alone also in its wide and 
abiding influence. It did not merely conquer the na- 
tions ; it impressed its own character upon them. It 
imparted its own institutions, laws, and spirit. The 
external dominion has long since passed away, but 
Rome still rules the nations. In its nature and in its 
work it was diverse from all that were before it. It is 
wonderful to notice how the features which strike the 
mind of the prophet are those which also arrest the 
attention of the historian. Guizot speaks of Rome as 
"the most extraordinary dominion that ever led captive 
and oppressed a world." "Now for the -first time/' 
says Heeren, "appears on the page of history the fear- 
ful phenomenon of a great military republic." "I con- 
fess that my own imagination," writes Mr. Merivale, 
"is most powerfully excited by the visible connection 
between moral influence and material authority which 
is presented, to an extent never realized before or since, 
by the phenomenon of the Roman Empire."* Niebuhr 
expresses still more fully the same sentiment. "The 
history of Rome has the highest claims to our atten- 
tion. It shows us a nation, which was in its origin 
small as a grain of corn ; but this originally small popu- 
lation waxed great, transferred its character to hun- 
dreds of thousands, and became the sovereign of na- 
tions from the rising to the setting sun. The whole of 
western Europe adopted the language of the Romans, 
and its inhabitants looked upon themselves as Romans. 
The laws and institutions of the Romans acquired such 
a power and durability, that even at the present mo- 
ment they still continue to maintain their influence 
upon millions of men. Such a development is without 

* History of the Romans, I., p. xiii. 



162 PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. 

a parallel in the history of the world. Before this star 
all others fade and vanish." * 
The prophet is also struck with 

THE TERRIBLENESS, 

as well as with the singularity, of the fourth empire. 
The fourth beast was "terrible, terrible exceedingly" 
(vii. 7, 19). In touching upon this I am taking the 
features of the picture in the order in which they stand 
in the prophecy. I am not making selections but re- 
peating in detail the words of this portion of Scripture. 
Is it not wonderful then to observe that history merely 
reproduces the picture previously drawn in the 
prophecy? I have already quoted Heeren's words 
about i( the fearful phenomenon" presented by Rome. 
Schlegel speaks of the "fearful" rapidity of its pro- 
gress, and Mommsen of its (C fearfully strict military 
discipline." Merivale confesses that he contemplates 
the swift progress of the Roman arms "with awe and 
astonishment." 

The cause of this astonishment will be more apparent 
as we proceed. The prophet speaks next of 

THE STRENGTH 

of the fourth empire. It was "powerful an3 strong 
exceedingly" (vi. 7) ; "The fourth kingdom shall be 
strong as iron" (ii. 40). Here again we have one of 
the great outstanding features of the Roman empire. 
Menzel speaks of it as "a colossal empire of force." 
"In practised vigor and constancy under every priva- 
tion," says Schlegel, "the Roman infantry, with the 
vigorous masses of its legion, surpassed all military 
bodies that have ever been organized." And again, 
"When even Hannibal, the most formidable adversary 
the Roman republic ever h^d to encounter, and the one 

* History of Rome, L, p. 92. 



THE CHARACTER OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 163 

who had most deeply studied its true character and the 
danger threatening the world from this quarter ; when 
even he, after the many great victories which, in a long 
series of years, he had obtained over the Romans in 
the second Punic war, though he shook the power, was 
unable to break the spirit of this people : when this was 
the case one might regard the great political question 
of the then civilized world as settled ; and it could no 
longer be a matter of doubt that that city, justly de- 
nominated strength, and which, even from of old, 
had been the idol of her sons (who accounted every- 
thing as nought in comparison with her interests) : 
that that city, I say, was destined to conquer the world 
and establish an empire, the like whereof had never 
yet been founded by preceding conquerors." Even 
Gibbon accepts the language of the prophecy as the 
truest description of the unparalleled might of Rome. 
"The arms of the Republic, sometimes vanquished in 
battle, always victorious in war, advanced with rapid 
steps to the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the 
ocean ; and the images of gold, of silver, or brass, that 
might serve to represent the nations and their kings, 
were successively broken by the iron monarchy of 
Rome." * 

The more closely we look the more do we recognize 
the truth of the prophetic picture. Behind the iron 
strength there was an iron nature. Its mark is every- 
where. It is seen in their stern self-control. Laws 
were passed and enforced, for example, against the 
spread of luxury. Rufinus, who had held the high 
office of consul, was struck off the list of censors be- 
cause he possessed silver plate to the value of £34. 
These laws entered even into the house of mourning, 
and prescribed how much might be spent in affording 
grief the melancholy satisfaction of showing honour to 
the dead. Mommsen speaks of their "stern and ener- 

* Fall of the Roman Empire, chap, xxxviii. 



1 64 PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. 

getic morality." The iron was seen also in the disci- 
pline, to which the armies willingly submitted. Im- 
provements were made in arms and in tactics, but there 
was no change in the stern discipline of Rome. "The 
old, fearfully strict, military discipline remained un- 
altered. Still, as formerly the general was at liberty 
to behead any man serving in his camp, and to scourge 
with rods the staff officer as well as the common sol- 
dier; nor were such punishments inflicted merely on 
account of common crimes, but also when an officer had 
allowed himself to deviate from the orders which he 
had received, or when a division had allowed itself to 
be surprised, or had fled from the field of battle." * 

In the history of no other people do we find this 
union of stern, vigilant, authority, and voluntary, in- 
telligent, submission. Nowhere besides do we mark 
the strength which this union gave. From the cir- 
cumference to the centre of this people's life, from the 
far-off camps and battle-fields to the home, there is no 
alloy. It is the iron kingdom, standing alone through 
all history in its terribleness and grandeur. But when 
we have marked its peerless strength, we have to re- 
member that from of old this word said it should be 
so: ""the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron;" it 
shall be "powerful and strong exceedingly." 

But the prophet also notes 

THE TYRANNOUS USE 

which was made of the iron strength. "TKe fourth 
kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron 
break'eth in pieces and subdueth all things: and as 
iron tfiat crusheth all these (that is — gold, silver, and 
brass) shall it break in pieces and crush" (Dan. ii. 40). 
And, again, the fourth beast "devoured and brake in 
pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet." This 
later vision was thus interpreted to the prophet. "The 

* Momtnsen; History of Rome, I., p. 454. 



THE TYRANNY OF ROME. 165 

fourth beast shall be a fourth kingdom upon earth, 
which shall be diverse from all the kingdoms, and 
shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, 
and break it in pieces" (Dan. vii. 7, 23). 

The Romans were conscious of their mission. Virgil 
represents iEneas as thus addressed by the shade of 
Anchises : — 

Others belike with happier grace 
From bronze or stone shall call the face, 
* Plead doubtful causes, map the skies, 
And tell when planets set or rise: 
But Roman, thou, do thou control 
The nations far and wide: 

Be this thy genius — to impose 
The rule of peace on vanquished foes, 
Show pity to the humblest soul 
And crush the sons of pride* 

In connection with these lines, Bunsen remarks that 
the Romans "regarded the ruling of the world as a 
vocation entrusted to them by the gods, for the sup- 
pression of injustice upon the earth, and the obtaining 
of redress for the oppressed, the latter of course be- 
ing those who appealed to the Romans for defence. 
Those who preferred independence were rebels, sedi- 
tious. All who set themselves in opposition to the 
will of the civilizing, law-dispensing, divinities were re- 
garded as barbarians/'f 

How they fulfilled what they believed to be their 
vocation, the whole world knows. Rome ever held her 
head on high as if she felt she was the world's Queen. 
She would make no peace with a victorious foe : she 
might be sore bestead, but she never acknowledged 
weakness. When Hannibal had shattered her domin- 
ion in Italy itself and was threatening her very exist- 
ence, the donations sent by the king of Syracuse and 

* 2£neid, vi., Conington's translation, 
f God in History, ii., pp. 363-364. 



l66 PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLDS HISTORY. 

the Greek cities of Italy were declined courteously, 
but with unbending haughtiness. A more terrible trial 
awaited her. Her last army was annihilated at Cannae. 
On that fatal field 70,000 of her choicest sons lay cold 
and stiff, and her power seemed to have perished with 
them. But even then Rome would not despair nor 
give way to a moment's weakness. The cheek might 
pale, but the head was still erect, the step was firm. 
Only one of the generals escaped, the Consul Varro, 
the author of the disaster ; "and the Roman senators 
met him at the gate and thanked him that he had not 
despaired of the salvation of his country. . . . The 
senate preserved its firm and unbending attitude while 
messengers from all sides hastened to Rome to report 
the loss of battles, the secession of allies, the capture 
of posts and magazines, and to ask for reinforcements 
for the valley of the Po, and for Sicily at a time 
when Italy was abandoned and Rome almost without 
a garrison. . . . The time of mourning for the 
fallen was restricted to 30 days that the service of the 
gods of joy, from which those clad in mourning were 
excluded, might not too long be interrupted — for so 
great was the number of the fallen that there was 
scarcely a family which had not to lament its dead."* 
Such was the scarcity of men fit for the field that, 
while calling out all above boyhood, Rome had to arm 
besides her debtors and criminals and slaves: yet at 
this very time when "Hannibal offered a release of 
captives at the expense of the Roman treasury it was 
declined, and the Carthaginian envoy who had arrived 
with the deputation of captives was not allowed to 
enter the city: nothing should look as if the senate 
thought of peace. Not only were the allies to be pre- 
vented from believing that Rome was disposed to 
enter into negotiations, but even the meanest citizen 
was to be made to understand that for him, as for all, 

* Mommsen, History of Rome, ii., p. 137. 



THE TYRANNY OF ROME. 167 

there was no peace, and that safety lay only in 
victory."* 

As marked a feature as her refusal to make peace 
with a victorious enemy was her inability to bear the 
existence of a rival. Cato's "Delenda est Carthago" 
(Carthage must be blotted out), was simply a state- 
ment of the deliberate policy of Rome. Foes must 
be beaten: rivals must be crushed. Cato's decree was 
carried out by Scipio, one of the most humane Romans 
of his time, and this is the way in which the deed was 
done: "For seventeen days the city was in flames, 
and the numbers that were exterminated amounted to 
700,000 souls, including the women and children sold 
into slavery: so that this scene of horror served as 
an early prelude to the later destruction of Jerusalem. 
. . . Whenever Roman interests were at stake, all 
mankind, and the lives of nations, were considered as 
of no importance."f "Scipio's letter to the senate is 
said to have contained no more than these words: 
'Carthage is taken. The army awaits your further 
orders/ The tidings were received at Rome with un- 
common demonstrations of joy. The victors recollect- 
ing all the passages of their former wars, the alarms 
which had been given by Hannibal and the irreconcil- 
able antipathy of the two nations, gave orders to raze 
the fortifications of Carthage, and even to destroy the 
materials of which they were constructed.":}: 

Whatever Rome touched with a finger, was cer- 
tain to be crushed at last beneath her feet. Judea is 
a familiar instance. Sorely pressed by the Greco- 
Syrian power, she placed herself in 160 b. c. under 
Roman protection. Not a hundred years after, in 
63 b. c, Pompey, at the head of a triumphant army, 
is appointing whom he pleases to the throne and to 
the high-priesthood. In the year 7 a. d. the shadow 

* Ibid., pp. 137-138. f Schlegel, Philosophy of History, 
t Ferguson, History of the Roman Republic. 



l68 PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLDS HISTORY. 

of its independence has gone, and it is made a prov- 
ince of the Roman Empire. In 70 a. d. resistance 
is crushed by deluging the land with blood and turn- 
ing it into a desert. The same policy was pursued 
in Greece. The Romans came as the enemies of 
tyrants and the restorers of the ancient freedom. 
That was, however, only the beginning of the story ; 
it ended thus: "Rome, amid the rising hatred, did 
not deem herself secure until by one blow she had 
rid herself of all opponents of any importance. 
Above a thousand of the most eminent of the 
Achseans were summoned to Rome to justify them- 
selves, and there detained seventeen years in prison 
without a hearing. . . The ultimate lot, both of 
Macedon and Greece, was decided by the system 
now adopted at Rome, that of converting the pre- 
vious dependence of nations into formal subjection. 
The insurrection of Andriscus in Macedonia, an in- 
dividual who pretended to be the son of Perseus, 
was quelled by Metellus, the country being con- 
stituted a Roman province ; two years afterwards, at 
the sack of Corinth, vanished the last glimmer of 
Grecian freedom."* "It is curious to observe," says 
Arnold, "how, after every successive conquest, the 
Romans altered their behaviour to those allies who 
had aided them to gain it, and whose friendship or 
enmity was now become indifferent to them. Thus, 
after their first war with Philip, they slighted the 
Italians; after they had vanquished Antiochus, 
they readily listened to complaints against Philip; 
and now the destruction of Macedon enabled them 
to use the language of sovereigns rather than of 
allies to their oldest and most faithful friends, 
Eumenes, the Rhodians, and the Achseans. . . . 
Let it be for ever remembered that, by a decree of 
the senate, seventy towns of Epirus were given up 

* Heeren. 



THE TYRANNY OF ROME. 1 69 

to be plundered by the Roman army, after all hos- 
tilities were at an end; that falsehood and deceit 
were used to prevent resistance or escape ; and that 
in one day and one hour seventy towns were sacked 
and destroyed, and one hundred and fifty thousand 
human beings sold for slaves/'* 

Wherever Rome imagined her interests were 
threatened she pursued the same terrible policy. 
"Two nations, the Teneteri and Usipetes, who had 
been driven out of their country by the Suevi, 
crossed the Rhine and demanded land from Caesar, 
who, unwilling to tolerate so many warlike German 
tribes in Gaul, resolved to make a fearful example of 
them in order to deter others from crossing the fron- 
tier, and, treacherously seizing the German leader 
. . . . suddenly attacked his unsuspecting fol- 
lowers and drove them into the narrow tongue of 
land at the conflux of the Maes and the Rhine, where 
the greater part were either slaughtered, drowned, 
or taken prisoners/'t 

The Romans had suffered considerable annoyance 
and loss from the irruptions of the Tyrolese. A 
great power could not be expected to endure such 
insults with meekness. We should look for reprisals 
severe enough to prove that its friendship was more 
to be desired than its enmity But the reader will 
hardly be prepared for the following tale of ven- 
geance. "The Romans advanced from the Bodensee 
into the mountains and systematically exterminated 
the inhabitants. Every man fell sword in hand, and 
the women, maddened by despair, flung their 
children into the faces of the enemy. The Roman 
historian turns with horror from the monstrous 
crimes that blacken the page in which the destruc- 
tion of the ancient inhabitants of the Tyrol by Tib- 
erius, afterwards Emperor of Rome, is recorded."t 

* Later Roman Commonwealth, I., 19-20. 
t Menzel, History of Germany. J Ibid. 



I70 PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLD S HISTORY. 

One of the noblest struggles for freedom was that 
carried on in Spain by Viriathus, "a simple Spanish 
countryman — whom after six years' war she could 
only rid herself of by assassination. The war never- 
theless continued after his death against the Numan- 
tines, who would not be subjected, but were at last 
destroyed by Scipio Aemilianus."* 

And let it not be supposed that these were inci- 
dents, the real nature of which the Romans sought 
in any way to conceal from public view. Such tales 
of bloodshed formed the special glory of their public 
men. It was inscribed in Pompey's honor on the 
temple of Minerva that "he sunk, or took, 846 ships; 
reduced 1,538 towns and fortresses; and vanquished, 
slew, or led into captivity 2,183,000 men. Herder 
speaks of "the blood-drenched soil of Roman glory," 
and sums up Roman history in two words — "Ravage 
and destruction." "It was," he says, "as if the iron* 
footed god of war, Aradivus, so highly revered from 
of old by the people of Romulus, actually bestrode 
the globe and at every step struck out new torrents 
of blood. . . There can be no doubt that if the 
[Roman history were divested of its accustomed 
rhetoric, of all the patriotic maxims and trite sayings 
of politicians, and were presented with strict and 
minute accuracy in all its living reality, every 
humane mind would ,be deeply shocked at such a 
picture of tragic truth, and penetrated with the pro- 
foundest detestation and horror."t 

The prophecy also notes that the hold of Rome 
upon the nations was not to be relaxed till their 

SUBJUGATION WAS PERFECTED. 

The fourth dominion was not only to devour and 
break in pieces : it was also to stamp the residue 
with its feet. Rome was resolved not only to con- 

* Heeren. f Schlegel, Philosophy of History. 



THE TYRANNY OF ROME. I71 

quer, but also to absorb, the whole world Her col- 
onies were planted in the conquered countries, break- 
ing up their strength for resistance, and forming 
centres whence her language and her laws were 
forced upon the peoples. Her military highways, 
constructed with such solidity and skill that many 
of then- remain to the present time, connected Rome 
with her most distant conquests and enabled her to 
pour in her legions wherever her safety or her honor 
might be threatened. And what her generals began 
her proconsuls and praetors perfected. "The highest 
military and civil powers," says Heeren, "were 
united in these governors; a principal cause of the 
horrible oppression which was soon felt. Troops 
were always kept up in the provinces, and the Latin 
language everywhere introduced (except only where 
Greek was spoken) that the inhabitants might be 
made as much like Romans as possible." In a word, 
she devoured, and brake in pieces, and stamped the 
residue with her feet. 

Here, as elsewhere, prophecy becomes the truest 
and tersest of all possible descriptions. The eye 
which here looked onward saw clearly and read 
deeply. But we are now to touch upon something 
still more wonderful. Those ancient words picture 
the political condition of 

our own times! 

It will be observed that the prophecy professes to 
tell the history, as well as the character, of the 
fourth kingdom. We notice first that, though it was 
one dominion, it was nevertheless represented in the 
figure as twofold. In the case of the second do- 
minion, represented by the arms and the breast of 
silver, it was indicated that the power originally 
twofold should, in process of time, become one. 
This was literally fulfilled in the Medes and Per- 
sians becoming one people. But in the part of the 



172 PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. 

figure, which was the symbol of the Roman power, 
this process appears to be reversed. What was 
originally one becomes two. It might be supposed 
that in pointing out this feature we are laying our- 
selves open to the charge of straining the words of 
Scripture, if not of profaning sacred things by child- 
ish trifling. Should any one view the matter in this 
light, let me remind him of one fact, before passing 
on. The Empire, originally one, 

DID BECOME TWOFOLD. 

The Emperor Diocletian, who improved upon the 
persecuting policy of his predecessors, and waged 
war against the Scriptures, ordering them to be 
searched for and destroyed, became the unconscious 
instrument by which this prediction was fulfilled. 
Feeling that the empire, whose destinies he guided, 
called for more than one man's thought and 
strength, he associated Maximian with himself in 
the government. Maximian received the western 
provinces, while Diocletian retained the eastern for 
himself. This division was made in 287 a. d., and 
was continued with but slight interruption till the 
western empire was overthrown by Odoacer in 476 
a. d. The eastern finally fell in the capture of Con- 
stantinople by the Turks in 1453. The best com- 
ment on this part of the prophecy is found in the 
division which all historians recognize. The one 
dominion of Rome becomes at length the empires of 
the East and of the West. 

But there was to be a further subdivision. As we 
have already seen, it was predicted that the fourth 
kingdom was not to be supplanted by any other 
dominion of man, but was 

TO ENDURE IN ITS FRAGMENTS 

till the time of the end. Attention is directed in the 
vision given to Nebuchadnezzar to the toes of the 



THE DESCRIPTION OF OUR OWN TIMES. 173 

image. "The toes of the feet" are spoken of as kings 
or kingdoms — which "shall not cleave one to an- 
other/' and in whose days "shall the God of heaven 
set up a kingdom whiqh shall never be destroyed, 
nor shall the sovereignty thereof be left to another 
people" (Dan. ii 41-44). 

Now we know that this word has remained un- 
altered and untouched since the beginning of the 
Christian era. We know also that for well-nigh five 
centuries afterwards the word was unfulfilled. 
There were two empires, but there was no further 
subdivision. We know, too, that for ages the pre- 
diction has been fulfilled to the very letter. The two 
have become many. It has not been a merely tem- 
porary condition. Neither wars, nor intermarriages, 
nor alliances, tried though they have all been, have 
availed to re-unite the fragments and restore the 
ancient unity of the empire. The manifold division 
has proved to be a permanent condition, and the 
historical development of the fourth dominion has 
proceeded exactly as this prediction foretold it 
should do. 

Were it possible to explain this away as merely a 
strange coincidence, there is more that calls for 
notice and explanation. The prophecy 

TEACHES US TO READ OUR OWN HISTORY. 

We may know much regarding the various nation- 
alities scattered over what was once the Roman em- 
pire, without having any right conception of our 
and their relation to ancient Rome. It may seem to 
us that the empire has been supplanted by the na- 
tions, and has passed utterly away. The prophecy, 
on the other hand, declares that the fourth dominion 
still abides, that Rome still lives. The separate 
dominions are only its development ; the nations are 
its fragments, partaking of its nature and continuing 
its existence. 



174 PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLDS HISTORY. 

We need not argue as to which of these views is 
correct The testimony of those who have studied 
the history of the past is that Rome lives on. "The 
public reason of the Romans has been silently or 
studiously transfused into the domestic institutions 
of Europe, and the laws of Justinian still command 
the respect or obedience of independent nations. "* 
Even the outward continuity remained unbroken. 
"Gothic and other chiefs gave themselves the name 
of Roman Patricians, and at a later date the Roman 
empire was restored." Clovis received from Con- 
stantinople the titles of Consul and Patrician, and 
by that means reconciled the people of his Roman 
conquests to his sway. Charlemagne was crowned 
Emperor of Rome by Leo III., the Roman bishop. 
And this was no unmeaning form. "A seal," says 
Hallam, "was put to the glory of Charlemagne when 
Leo III., in the name of the Roman people, placed 
upon his head the imperial crown. His father, Pe- 
pin, had, in 800, borne the title of Patrician, and he 
had himself exercised, with that title, a regular sov- 
ereignty . over Rome. Money was coined in his 
name, and an oath of fidelity was taken by the clergy 
and the people. But the appellation of Emperor 
seemed to place his authority over all his subjects 
on a new footing. It was full of high and indefinite 
pretensions, tending to overshadow the free election 
of the Franks by a fictitious descent from Augustus. 
A fresh oath of fidelity to him as Emperor was de- 
manded from his subjects." The Church, by this 
time thoroughly Romanized, rose into power as the 
Empire fell, and, along with the faith which it gave 
to the conquerors, handed down the Roman culture. 
Roman law continued its hold, and Roman institu- 
tions lived on among the people. "Considering at- 
tentively," says Hegel, "how many of the old institu- 
tions continued to subsist, and studying the feelings 

* Gibbon. 



THE INFLUENCE OF ROME. I75 

of that time, as they are faintly preserved in its 
scanty records, it seems hardly too much to say that 
in the 8th century the Roman empire still existed in 
the West; existed in men's minds as a power, weak- 
ened, delegated, suspended, but not destroyed/'* 

To these I may add a more recent and not less 
weighty testimony. "If the historian of Rome," 
writes Freeman, "is bound to look back, still more 
is he bound to look onwards. He has but to cast his 
eye on the world around him to see that Rome is 
still a living and abiding power. The tongue of 
Rome is the groundwork of the living speech of 
south-western Europe; it shares our own vocabu- 
lary with the tongue of our Teutonic fathers. The 
tongue of Rome is still the ecclesiastical language 
of half Christendom; the days are hardly past when 
it was the common speech of science and learning. 
The law of Rome is still quoted in our courts and 
taught in our Universities; in other lands it forms 
the source and groundwork of their whole jurispru- 
dence. Little more than half a century has passed 
since an Emperor of the Romans, tracing his un- 
broken descent from Constantine and Augustus, still 
held his place among European sovereigns, and, as 
Emperor of the Romans, still claimed precedence 
over every meaner potentate. And the title of a 
Roman office, the surname of a Roman family, is 
still the highest object of human ambition, still 
clutched at alike by worn-out dynasties and by suc- 
cessful usurpers. Go eastward, and the whole diplo- 
matic skill of Europe is taxed to settle the affairs of 
a Roman colony, which, cut off alike by time and 
distance, still clings to its Roman language and 
glories in its Roman name. We made war but yes- 
terday upon a power whose badge is the Roman 
eagle, on behalf of one whose capital has not yet lost 
the official title of New Rome. Look below the sur- 

* Philosophy of History, 



1/6 PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLD* S HISTORY. 

face, and the Christian subjects of the Porte are 
found called and calling themselves Romans ; go be- 
yond the Tigris, and their master himself is known 
to the votary of Allah simply as the Roman Caesar."* 
The kingdoms of to-day are, therefore, as this 
prophecy pictured them, divisions and continuations 
of the Roman Empire. There are two other features 
in the picture which, to say the least, are certainly 
not less noteworthy. 

THE NUMBER OF THE KINGDOMS 

as they will be found at "the time of the end" is 
definitely stated. These are represented, as we have 
seen, by "the toes" of the image, and in the second 
vision the fourth beast is pictured as having "ten 
horns." The horn in the Old Testament is the 
symbol of power, and the meaning of this part of 
the figure evidently is that the fourth dominion 
would finally develop into ten "powers." That this 
is the meaning is placed beyond doubt by the ex- 
planation — "As for the ten horns, out of this king- 
dom shall ten kings arise" (Dan. vii. 24). 

As we look back over the recent history of Europe 
we must be struck by the fact that this part of the 
prophecy is being rapidly 

FULFILLED IN OUR OWN TIMES. 

The fragments of the fourth dominion are assum- 
ing their final shape. The last line of division be- 
tween the eastern and western empires passed along 
what is now the western boundary of Austria, down 
through the Adriatic, and across the Mediterannean, 
striking the coast of Africa to the west of Cyrene. 
If we are to follow the indications of the first vision, 
we shall expect to find five kingdoms in each of the 
two empires. What then is their present condition? 

* Historial Essays — Second Series, pp. 291, 292. 



DESCRIPTION OF OUR OWN TIMES. 1 77 

It has to be borne in mind that the northern limits 
of the Roman dominion were the Rhine and the 
Danube. Russia, Norway and Sweden, Denmark, 
and Holland, are, therefore, excluded from our reck- 
oning. A few years ago we should have looked in 
vain in the empire of the West for the five powers of 
the prophecy. But Germany, which was previously 
divided into five kingdoms and numerous principal- 
ities, has latterly become one empire; and Italy, 
which was similarly subdivided, is now also a single 
kingdom. These changes, which have been among 
the surprises of modern history, give us in the old 
empire of the west eight kingdoms — Great Britain, 
France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Switz- 
erland, Italy. Three of these, Belgium, Switzerland, 
and Portugal, will no doubt soon cease to exist as 
separate powers, and we shall then have the five 
"powers" foretold by the prophecy. Recent changes 
have also paved the way for its fulfilment in the 
eastern division of the empire. We can already 
mark the lines of a fivefold division there. There 
are Austria, the Danubian Principalities,, Greece, 
Turkey, and Egypt. Is it not marvellous that we 
should now have, not only the indication of a ten- 
fold division of the fourth dominion, but also of five 
kingdoms in each of the two great divisions of the old 
Roman empire? 

All these marvels are excelled, however, by an- 
other, which I may describe as a miracle of insight. 
The parts of the image which represent the four 
dominions regularly 

INCREASE IN STRENGTH. 

The gold is softer than the silver, the silver than the 
brass, the brass than the iron. Special attention is 
directed to this feature in the case of the fourth 
kingdom. It "shall be strong as iron ; forasmuch as 
iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things, and 



I78 PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLDS HISTORY. 

as iron that crusheth all these, shall it break in 
pieces and crush" (Dan. ii. 40). But the kingdoms 
also sustain another relationship to each other. 
They as regularly 

DECREASE IN VALUE. 

Attention is called to this fact in the case of the 
second kingdom. The prophet said to the king, 
"Thou art the head of gold. And after thee shall 
arise another kingdom inferior to thee" (Dan. ii. 

39). 

It will be evident that the statement of this double 
relationship indicates discrimination of a most thor- 
ough-going character. We know that in the case of 
the Greek and Roman kingdoms, at any rate, the 
prediction was fulfilled The brass was stronger 
than the gold and the silver; and the iron was also 
stronger than the brass. And this, it need hardly be 
remarked, was not a necessity. It was not necessary 
that each succeeding kingdom should be stronger 
than that which went before it. A great kingdom 
may, in the hour of its weakness, fall a prey to one 
which, in the fulness of its vigor, it would have 
regarded as a contemptible adversary. But this was 
not to be the story of the future. The kingdoms 
were to increase in strength, and the last was to be 
the strongest of them all. We are now met, however, 
by the startling paradox that these dominions as they 
increase in strength will decrease in value, and that 
the strongest of them all will be the least precious ! 
It has been already pointed out that, in the king's 
vision, history is read from the view-point of ambi- 
tion. We see the future as it is scanned by a Ne- 
buchadnezzar or a Napoleon. Our eye rests on the 
mighty prizes which lie in the pathway of conquest. 
But, while this explains why the kingdoms are de- 
scribed in regard to their strength and their value, 
it increases our difficulty. Surely, w r e say, to the 



DANIEL AND HEGEL. 1 79 

ambitious man the stronger kingdom must neces- 
sarily be the more valuable, and the strongest the 
most precious of all. Yet, instead of this, the silver 
of the second is explained as indicating an inferior 
dominion to the first, and consequently the iron of 
the fourth must be taken as indicating that the last 
and strongest was the least precious of the four. 

This point seems to have quite escaped the notice 
of commentators, and there is no help to be had in 
consulting them. Turning again to the prophecy 
the meaning is plain. The dominions so differ in 
character that he, who possesses the first, holds 
what will yield to ambition a fuller satisfaction than 
can be known in the possession of any of the others. 
To the man of ambition — the man who lusts after 
lordship over his fellows — the first dominion is more 
precious than the second, the second than the third, 
the third than the fourth. But, while the meaning 
is plain, its plainness does not remove our difficulty. 
Why should the strength of the dominions be in 
inverse ratio to their value? Why should those 
qualities not increase or decrease together? 

When my attention was first attracted to this 
feature in the prophecy, it seemed to me that light 
might be found in the writings of those who dealt 
with Universal History, and of such especially as 
dealt with it philosophically. The search which was 
then entered upon was not in vain. There is one 
book for which we are indebted to one of Germany's 
deepest thinkers, and which deserves, beyond any 
other that has ever been written, the name of a 
"Philosophy of History." Its merits have been 
widely recognized, and have been as freely admitted 
by the opponents, as they have been loudly pro- 
claimed by the disciples, of the writer. I refer to 
the well-known work of Jlegel, Morell says of it: 
"Hegel has given us many views of great originality. 
His 'Philosophy of History' is especially valuable, as 



iSo PROPHETIC FORECAST OF THE WORLDS HISTORY. 

containing investigations into the peculiar charac- 
teristics of the different ages of the world, that 
throw great light upon the intellectual progress of 
civilization/'* Emil Palleske gives it still higher 
praise. He refers, in his life of Schiller, to Kant's 
treatise on "Ideas for a Universal History consid- 
ered in a cosmopolitan light/' and says : "Kant in 
this compares himself to Kepler, and wished that he 
might have a Newton as a successor. Hegel be- 
came this Newton. "t 

Turning now to his "Philosophy of History/' we 
find that it covers the entire field described in the 
prophecy. It contains no reference whatever, it 
may be said, to the words of Scripture, and there 
is in Hegel's mind apparently not the remotest 
thought of them. But the problem, if we may so 
call it, is the same. Hegel contemplates the His- 
tory of man as a whole. He sees in those successive 
dominions, or rather in the conception of human 
freedom which each embodies, the advancing steps 
of a continuous development The first thing which 
strikes us is that the number of these stages is iden- 
tical with that in the Book of Daniel. There are 
five developments. There is the childhood, the boy- 
hood, the youth, the manhood, and the old age of 
history, the last not being weakness, but full matur- 
ity. Then these five are divided exactly as in the 
prophecy. There are four dominions of man, and 
one of God in man. Hegel saw that in Christianity 
civilization had reached a stage which it never had 
attained before, and that, when Christianity shall 
have done its work and permeated all social and 
political relationships, the last and highest stage of 
man's development will be reached. 

Even these coincidences are astonishing. They 
prove that the Scripture looking forward and the 

* History of Modem Philosophy, ii., pp. 154-155. f Vol, ii., 

p. 32. 



THE YOUTH OF HISTORY. l8l 

philosopher looking back have seen the same things. 
But we have not exhausted Hegel's testimony. He 
deals with kingdoms, not because he desires to trace 
their conquests or record the influence which they 
exerted over mankind, but merely because it is only 
when men have been gathered into states that the 
march of civilization begins. It is with this civiliza- 
tion that he concerns himself. What were the ideas 
whch lay beneath it, and moulded it, and gave it its 
distinctive form? As Hegel looked back over the 
past he saw one form emerging ever more fully from 
surrounding darkness and mist; it was the form of 
Freedom. Men did not at first realize — at least, as 
we find them congregated together in states — all 
that they were as men. The state was in the begin- 
ning merely an enlargement of the family. Sover- 
eignty was looked upon as invested with all the 
rights, and hedged round about with all the sanctity, 
of fatherhood. The king was the father in whose 
care all confided, whose frown they dreaded, and in 
whose smile they rejoiced. He alone was free ; the 
duty of every other was submission to his will. 
That was 

THE CHILDHOOD OF HISTORY. 

Hegel finds the fullest illustration of it in China. 
The ancient economy of Babylon was almost wholly 
unknown in Hegel's time, and he makes only a pass- 
ing reference to it; but I shall show that every 
feature, which he notes in the condition of China 
has its parallel in that of the Assyrio-Babylonian 
monarchy. And we now understand the reason of the 
similarity. Recent investigations have shown that 
the Chinese are the descendants of the Accadians to 
whom Babylonia owed its civilisation. Hegel 
dwells upon the slavery of the family relations in 
China: "The duties of the family are absolutely 
binding and established and regulated by law. The 



1 82 FORECAST OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. 

son may not accost the father when he comes into 
the room; he must seem to contract himself to 
nothing at the side of the door, and may not leave 
the room without. the father's permission/'* With 
this compare the following: "A tablet in the British 
Museum contains a fragment of the civil war, in a 
double text — Turanian-Chaldsean and Semitic-Assy- 
rian — on the subject of the rights and reciprocal 
duties of husbands and wives, fathers and children. 
From this we find that the Assyrian family was 
constituted on the basis of the most absolute and 
uncontrolled power of the husband and the father."t 
Then of China Hegel says: "The patriarchal rela- 
tion is predominant, and the government is based 
upon the paternal management of the emperor, who 
keeps all departments of the State in order. . . . 
He is the patriarch, and everything in the State that 
can make any claim to reverence is attached to him 
. . . The emperor, as he is the supreme head of 
the State, is also the chief of its religion."! Lenor- 
mant, referring to the king's humility in the pres- 
ence of the gods, says, "But this man, who was so 
humble in the presence of the gods, held in Tiis hands, 
with regard to other men, the double power, spir- 
itual and temporal ; he was both a sovereign pontiff 
and an autocrat; he was called the vicegerent of 
the gods on earth; and his authority, thus emanat- 
ing from a divine source, was as absolute over the 
soul as over the body."|| 

One more twofold quotation will complete the 
picture : "Besides the imperial dignity there is prop- 
erly no elevated rank, no nobility among the Chi- 
nese; only the princes of the imperial house and the 
sons of the ministers enjoy any precedence of the 
kind, and they rather by their position than by their 

* Philosophy of History, p. 127. t Lenormant, Ancient His- 
tory of the East, vol. 1., p. 425. % Philosophy of History, 
pp. 126, 129, 137. !| Ancient History, vol. i., p. 418. 



THE YOUTH OF HISTORY. 183 

birth. Otherwise all are equal. . . . And 
though there is no distinction conferred by birth, 
and everyone can attain the highest dignity, this 
very equality testifies to no triumphant assertion of 
the worth of the inner man, but a servile conscious- 
ness — one which has not yet matured itself so far 
as to recognize distinctions."* Of the Assyrio- 
Babylonian civilization Lenormant speaks in ex- 
actly similar terms : "In Assyria there were no 
castes, nor even rigorously defined classes, no here- 
ditary or established aristocracy. There was com- 
plete social equality, such equality as despotism de- 
sires and establishes as most favorable to its own 
existence — an equality with a common level created 
by the yoke that bears equally on all, where there 
is no superiority but that of offices established by 
the will, often by the caprice, of an absolute 
master."t 

This, then, is what Hegel has well described as 
the Childhood of history, when all is simple and 
trustful. Here all right and power centre in the 
monarch. "Individuals remain as mere accidents. 
These revolve round the monarch, who as patriarch 
. . . stands at the head. . . . All the riches 
of imagination are appropriated to that dominant 
existence in which subjective freedom is essentially 
merged ; the latter looks for its dignity not in itself, 
but in that absolute object."t Could there be a finer 
comment on the words, "Thou, O king, art this head 
of gold;" or on these others, "The most high God 
gave Nebuchadnezzar ... a kingdom, and ma- 
jesty and glory and honour, and for the majesty 
that he gave him, all people, nations and 
languages, trembled and feared before him: whom 
he would he slew; and whom he would he kept 
alive ; and whom he would he set up, and whom he 

* Philosophy of History, pp. 130, 145. f Ancient History, 
vol. i., p. 423. $ Philosophy of History, i., p. in. 



184 FORECAST OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. 

would he put down" (Dan. v. 18, 19) ? On the one 
side there was the most despotic sway, on the other 
the deepest reverence, the most willing and unlimit- 
ed obedience. To the lust of ambition what nobler 
prize ever presented itself than to press back the 
boundaries of such a dominion till they were conter- 
minous with the world, and thus to become the 
centre of all earthly power, the source of all earthly 
beneficence, the one object of human reverence, 
whose thoughts to all men were wisdom, whose will 
was unquestioned law? He who swayed this 
sceptre ruled as a god upon the earth. He received 
as a spontaneous offering from men, in the child- 
hood of their history, what afterwards the world's 
wealth could not buy, nor the terrors of the sword 
compel. This was the prize of "fine gold." 
The Persian dominion constitutes 

"the boyhood of history, 

no longer manifesting the repose and trustingness 
of the child, but boisterous and turbulent."* The 
consciousness of freedom, or rather of human 
equality, begins to dawn. In the comparatively pure 
religion taught by Zoroaster another mighty pres- 
ence was recognized, before whom king and subject 
had alike to bow. "Ormuzd is the Lord of Light. 
. . He is the excellent, the good, the positive in 
all natural and spiritual existence."! The result of 
this purer faith was twofold. It was seen in the tol- 
eration of the Persian empire. The kingdoms are 
left with their own religions, institutions, and laws, 
and there is no longer any attempt to make the king 
the temporal and spiritual head of all mankind.t 
Nebuchadnezzar commands men of all nationalities 
to fall down and worship the image which he sets 
up, and is quite unable to comprehend the scruples 

^Philosophy of History, p. 112. f Ibid., p. 186. t Ibid., p. 120. 



THE BOYHOOD OF HISTORY. 1 85 

of the few pious Jews who refuse their adoration; 
while Cyrus and succeeding Persian kings assist in 
rebuilding the Jewish Temple. The King was there- 
fore less to the subject nations in this second than 
he had been in the preceding dominion. 

But there was another result — the relation be- 
tween the monarch and his own people was changed. 
"The Persians," says Hegel, "stood with one foot 
on their ancestral territory, with the other on their 
foreign conquests In his ancestral land the king 
was a friend among friends, and as if surrounded 
by equals."* The king had therefore become less 
to his own people than the Babylonian monarch had 
been among his. But, while this was so, it was as 
yet only the boyhood of the race. The glorious form 
of liberty was but dimly seen, and the spirit of slav- 
ery and tyranny was still unexpelled. "The subject 
nations/' says Heeren, "were treated as property, 
and were called slaves, in contrast with the Persians, 
who on their side were called freemen. Such was 
the relation of the nations towards each other : to- 
wards the king the Persians were as little free as the 
others." But the hand now laid upon the nations 
was mightier than that which they had felt before ; 
for this was, in a word, government by a dominant 
race, whereas in the previous case it had been gov- 
ernment by a dominant personality. The provinces 
were now held by Persian satraps. The nations 
were led into battle, not by their own princes, but by 
Persian generals. The monarch no longer stood 
among all the peoples and tribes of his dominion the 
one central power and splendour. He was king of 
the Persians, and they controlled for him the rest. 
Even to his own he was not the gorgeous personal- 
ity which the Babylonian king had been. This second 
throne was still a great prize for ambition, but it 
was less than the first. And yet, as the king was 

* Ibid., p. 196. 



1 86 FORECAST OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. 

thus multiplied, so to speak, into a nation, the one 
into the many, it necessarily held the dominion with 
a firmer grasp. It was the silver, less precious, but 
stronger, than the gold. 

The third era — the Grecian — is 

THE YOUTH OF HISTORY. 

"The Greek world may be compared," say Hegel, 
"with the period of adolescence, for here we have 
individualities forming themselves."* Freedom had 
its birth among the Greeks, and their tenacious 
grasp of this principle lay at the root of their glory 
and strength. Union and subordination were to 
some extent necessary in their predatory excursions, 
and in their contests with neighbouring cities and 
states; but they jealously guarded the gift of free- 
dom. Their hatred of a master still breathes its 
scornful defiance in that word "tyrant," which they 
have bequeathed to us. Here it was no longer the 
one who was free, but the many. Among such men 
the king could only be a general ; and even this rank 
he could hold only in virtue of his kingly nature. 
"The relation of princes to subjects," says Hegel, 
"we learn best from Homer. . . . Their sub- 
jects obeyed them, not as distinguished from them 
by conditions of caste, nor as in a state of serfdom, 
nor in the patriarchal relation, nor yet as the result 
of the express necessity for a constitutional govern- 
ment, but only from the need, universally felt, of be- 
ing held together and of obeying a ruler accustomed 
to command. The prince has just so much personal 
authority as he possesses the ability to acquire and 
to assert."t It was the commanding intellect alone 
that could be monarch here, for from feeble hands 
the reins would soon have been torn. Even under 
Alexander, the Grecian armies were remarkable for 
their insolence and insubordination. The strength, 

* Philosophy of History, p, 112. t Ibid., p. 239. 



THE MANHOOD OF HISTORY. 187 

however, which lay in this consciousness of free- 
dom was immense. Nothing could daunt its proud 
and noble daring. He who held this dominion 
controlled a power which was then irresistible; for 
he led an army of men. But his glory was less than 
that of the world conquerors who had preceded him; 
for he ruled, not over sons, but brothers ; not over 
slaves, but freemen. The brass was stronger, and 
yet less precious, than the silver and the gold. 
We come now to 

THE MANHOOD OF HISTORY, 

the Roman State. In the Grecian idea of freedom 
there was caprice, and, consequently, turbulence and 
disorganization. Each man was a law to himself. 
This idea sufficed for the youth ; but upon the man 
there now broke the majestic vision of a law out- 
side man's will, to which the will must be subjected, 
and by which, in return, freedom was guarded. 
Speaking of this distinction, Hegel says : "The 
Romans completed this important separation, and 
discovered a principle of right which is external; 
that is, one not dependent on disposition and senti- 
ment."* We know how law was reverenced among 
them. "In order to obtain a nearer view of this 
spirit, we must," says Hegel again, "pay particular 
attention to the conduct of the plebs in times of 
revolt against the patricians. How often, in insur- 
rection and anarchical disorder, were the plebs 
brought back into a state of tranquility by a mere 
form, and cheated of the fulfillment of its demands, 
righteous or unrighteous !"t 

But Rome went further. The will was Bowed to 
one abstraction — Law : the whole passion and 
strength of the Roman nature were given to an- 
other — the State. "True manhood acts neither in 



* Ibid., p. 300. t Ibid., p. 298. 



l88 FORECAST OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. 

accordance with the caprice of a despot, nor in 
obedience to a graceful caprice of its own, but works 
for a general aim — one in which the individual 
perishes, and realizes his own private object only in 
that general aim. Free individuals are sacrificed 
to the severe demands of the national objects to 
which they must surrender themselves in this ser- 
vice of abstract generalization/'* The Roman did 
not give up his liberty to a master, but he resigned 
it willingly to the State. 

It may be well to notice how fully all this is borne 
out by the great master of Roman history, who had 
as little thought of supporting Hegel as of supplying 
materials for a comment on Scripture. The Ro- 
mans, says Mommsen, were "A free people, under- 
standing the duty of obedience, disowning all mystic 
ideas of Divine right, absolutely equal in the eye 
of the law and one with another.""}" "Wherever in 
Hellas a tendency towards national union appeared, 
it was based, not on influences directly political, but 
on games and art : the contests at Olympia, the 
poems of Homer, the tragedies of Euripides, were 
the only bonds that held Hellas together. Resolute- 
ly, on the other hand, the Italian surrendered his 
own personal will for the sake of freedom, and 
learned to obey his father that he might know how 
to obey the State. In such subjection as this, in- 
dividual development might be marred, and the 
germs of fairest promise in man might be arrested 
in the bud; the Italian gained instead a feeling of 
fatherland and of patriotism such as the Greek never 
knew, and, alone among all the civilized nations of 
antiquity, succeeded in working out national unity 
in connection with a constitution based on self- 
government — a national unity, which at last placed 
in his hands the supremacy, not only over the di- 
vided Hellenic stock, but over the whole known 

* Ibid., pp. 113-114. f History of Rome, i., p. 85. 



THE MANHOOD OF HISTORY. 189 

world."* "Life, in the case of the Roman, was spent 
under conditions of austere restraint, and, the 
nobler he was, the less he was a free man. . . . 
But, while the individual had neither the wish nor 
the power to be ought else than a member of the 
community, the glory and the might of that com- 
munity was felt by every individual citizen as a 
personal possession to be transmitted along with 
his name and his homestead, to his posterity."! 

This voluntary self-surrender became a worship. 
The highest praise which the Roman coveted was to 
have it solemnly declared that he had deserved well 
of his country. Kings, consuls, tribunes, emperors 
were but the servants of the state. Their individual 
glory was absorbed in the surpassing glory of that 
abstraction: the man was overshadowed by the 
thing. 

Even the glory of the Emperors had to be veiled: 
"The Csesar was in truth," says Dr. Freeman, "an 
absolute monarch. But in theory he was only a citi- 
zen, a senator, a magistrate. The Emperor gave 
his vote in the Senate like another Senator, as 
Prince of the Senate he gave the first vote; but it 
was open either to patriots or to subtle flatterers to 
vote another way. His household was like that of 
any other Roman noble; he mixed with other 
Roman nobles on terms of social equality; he had 
no crowns and sceptres, no bendings of the knee, 
no titles of Majesty or Highness. . . . He was 
a monarch who reigned without a particle of royal 
show."t It is well known how fully Augustus rec- 
ognised the fact that personal pretensions would be 
utterly destructive of this enormous power, and how 
assiduously he cast away everything which would 
proclaim him the world's master. "The emperors/' 
writes Hegel, "conducted themselves in the enjoy- 

*Ibid., pp. 30, 31. \Ibid., iii., p. 394- 
X Historical Essays — Second Series, pp. 372-373- 



190 FORECAST OF THE WORLDS HISTORY. 

ment of their power with perfect simplicity, and did 
not surround themselves with pomp and splendour 
in Oriental fashion. We find in them traits of 
simplicity which astonish us. Thus, for example, 
Augustus writes a letter to Horace, in which he re- 
proaches him for having failed to address any poem 
to him, and asks him whether he thinks that that 
would disgrace him with posterity."* He ordered a 
palace, which had been built by his daughter Julia, 
to be pulled down because of its splendour. 

"It was not individual genius," says Mommsen, 
"that ruled in Rome, and through Rome in Italy, 
but the one immovable idea of a policy — propa- 
gated from generation to generation in the Senate. 
Immense successes were thus obtained at an im- 
mense price. In the Roman commonwealth noth- 
ing specially depended on any one man, either on 
soldier or general, and under the rigid discipline of 
its moral police all the idiosyncracies of human char- 
acter were extinguished. Rome reached a great- 
ness such as no other state of antiquity attained; 
but she dearly purchased her greatness at the sacri- 
fice of the graceful variety, of the easy abandon, 
and of the inward freedom of Hellenic life."f It was 
no longer their fellow-creature whom men served 
and for whom they sacrificed themselves; it was 
Rome. The highest place left for ambition was 
simply to be the first and greatest servant of the 
State. But the power which the stern, deep, devo- 
tion of the strong Roman soul placed in that ser- 
vant's hand was the mightiest and most terrible the 
world had ever seen. There was nothing it would 
not dare ; there was nothing it could not do. Though 
less precious to ambition, the iron was stronger 
than the gold, and the silver, and the brass. 

So far the agreement is remarkable, but Hegel 

* Philosophy of History, p. 326. f I., p. 471. 



THE OLD AGE OF HISTORY. 101 

renders it absolutely complete. He notes a fifth and 
last stage in the development, which he calls 

THE OLD AGE OF HISTORY. 

He explains himself thus: 'The old age of nature 
is weakness; but that of the spirit is its perfect 
maturity and strength. . . . The fourth phase" 
- — it must be remembered that Hegel's fourth is our 
fifth, as he reckons the first and second stages, his 
own "childhood" and "boyhood" of history, as one 
—"the fourth phase begins with the reconciliation 

PRESENTED BY CHRISTIANITY BUT ONLY IN THE GERM, 
WITHOUT NATIONAL OR POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT." 

When Christianity has permeated the national and polit- 
ical life, the fifth kingdom will be established ; in other 
words, the crowning development of history, the 
"germ" of which is already with us, is "the kingdom 
of God" It only remains to add that, as is implied 
in the prophecy which pictures the stone falling not 
only upon the iron but also upon the brass, the 
silver, and the gold, the various forms of past civi- 
lisation still remain. Their hour of might has 
passed away, but they themselves still exist. The 
gold has still its representative in China and else- 
where; the silver in such countries as Russia and 
Turkey; the brass in such a republic as Switzerland; 
the iron in those commonwealths where, in addition 
to Grecian freedom, there is the Roman unity and 
subordination. 

This, it will be observed, is not the testimony of 
distinguished opinion, but of facts. The facts were 
there though it needed genius to discern and make 
them manifest to us. But what of the Book in 
which all was written from of old? How was it 
that, more than three-and-twenty centuries before 
Hegel was born, and when the past he was after- 
wards to read had just begun to be. Time's entire 



192 FORECAST OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. 

story was already written, its developments num- 
bered, its epochs clearly marked, and their inmost 
meaning declared ? By whom was it that the future 
was so deeply searched and so fully made known? 
There can be but one reply. In a dull and cloudy 
(day the very light around us, subdued though it be, 
compels the belief that the sun, though we do not 
see him, is shining in the sky. But when the veil 
of clouds has been rolled away, and his full radiance 
is poured upon us, there is no more room for infer- 
ence or argument: every eye must note his glory. 
And so here we behold in unveiled splendour that 
full inspiration of the Divine Spirit, the presence of 
which we feel in every one of those words that 
search the hidden things of man's heart and the 
deep things of God — an inspiration which no lowly 
Heart will ever try to explain away, and which, in 
the face of these "abiding miracles of prophecy," 
no honest mind will seek to deny. And not only 
does it demonstrate the full inspiration of Scripture, 
it proves that God reigns in the earth and guides it 
on to good. It reminds us that, as the past has ac- 
complished His will, so the present and the future 
will hasten the world's salvation. The stone, mira- 
culous in its origin, cut out of the mountain-side with- 
out hands, will yet smite the toes of the image and 
grind the whole of it to powder. Christ will come 
again, and righteousness and love and peace will 
bless the earth, which man's dominions have mocked 
and scourged. Let us interpret the earth's need 
and lift the cry, "Thy Kingdom come" ! Let us 
yield ourselves, and let Him reign in us now, so that 
when He does come, it may not be with condemna- 
tion but with joy. 



CHAPTER IX. 

PROPHECIES FULFILLED IN THE COMING, THE HISTORY, 
AND THE WORK OF CHRIST. 

The evidence, with which we have hitherto been 
dealing, has been accumulating around one or two 
points. Whatever doubts we may have entertained 
regarding the existence of God and the authority of 
the Scriptures, we make bold to say that the study 
of the predictions discussed in these pages is calcu- 
lated to result in deep and abiding conviction. No 
one can compare those forecasts, so minute and 
circumstantial, with their complete fulfilment so 
many ages afterwards, and not feel assured that God 
is, and that His power is round us now, and that the 
Bible, wondrous in so many ways besides, finds its 
explanation in this alone — that it is His word to us. 

This might have been enough to lead us to accept 
its testimony regarding the person and work of 
Jesus Chrust. A piece of metal, said to be gold, is 
placed in the hands of a jeweller. He applies his tests 
here and there with satisfactory results, and then ac- 
cepts the whole without the slightest misgiving that 
it is what it was declared to be. A messenger comes 
with important intelligence. If it is true, it ought to 
be acted upon at once. There may be no means at 
hand of directly testing its truth, but it may be possi- 
ble to determine whether the messenger is trustworthy 
or not. His story may be sifted, or he may bear ere- 



194 PREDICTIONS REGARDING CHRIST. 

dentials, the production of which will banish every 
shadow of doubt. The Bible comes offering us in 
God's name salvation through Christ. If that is in- 
deed God's offer, it calls for immediate and grateful 
acceptance. Now, for determining whether it is of 
God, we repeat that such evidence as we have already 
before us might have been enough. We have tested 
the Scripture and found it to be truth. The creden- 
tials of this messenger have been produced, and these 
have settled the question whether the message is from 
God. 

But we are not compelled to rest upon that testi- 
mony. Direct evidence that this message of grace is 
indeed of God, has been given in ungrudged abun- 
dance, and the wonders of prophecy have been made 
to cluster round what is really the central truth of 
Scripture. Before touching, however, upon these pre- 
dictions, it is needful to say a word or two regarding 
the age of the Old Testament Scriptures. We have 
hitherto been content with the admission that they are 
as old as the beginning of the Christian era. In deal- 
ing with predictions which were accomplished long 
after that period, and even in our own time, nothing 
more was required. But in taking up predictions, 
which were fulfilled at that very point in the world's 
history, this admission is no longer sufficient. Can it 
be placed beyond the possibility of disproof or of 
doubt, that there was such an interval between the 
prophecy and the events it foretold, that no human 
foresight can account for its existence? 

Fortunately this point can be settled briefly and 
conclusively. There is no need for any prolonged dis- 
cussion, or for any long array of proofs. The books of 
the Old Testament were translated into Greek, at 
least two hundred years before the birth of our Lord. 
The Septuagint version, so called because the work 
of translation was done by about seventy learned 
Jews, was everywhere in use among the Jews, who 



PREDICTIONS REGARDING CHRIST. I95 

were scattered throughout the Roman Empire long be- 
fore the Christian era began. Philo, who was born 
some thirty years before Christ, speaks of the transla- 
tion as already ancient, and mentions that an annual 
festival was observed at Alexandria in commemora- 
tion of the work. "Even to this very day," he says, 
"there is every year a solemn assembly held, and a 
festival celebrated, in the island of Pharos, to which 
not only the Jews but a great number of persons of 
other nations sail across, reverencing the place in 
which the first light of interpretation shone forth, and 
thanking God for that ancient piece of beneficence 
which was always young and fresh." 

There is no reason, then, to doubt that the transla- 
tion was begun in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus 
about 280 b. c v and that it was completed not long 
after. We might, therefore, have insisted upon an 
earlier date than 200 b. c. for the origin of the Greek 
version. We might have argued also that, seeing the 
translation was then made, the books of the Old Tes- 
tament must be admitted to be still older; for they 
must have been received and venerated as God's word 
long before the necessity was felt for translating them 
from the Hebrew into that tongue, which the con- 
quests of Alexander had made the universal language 
of the time. But it is enough for our purpose to take 
the smallest interval which can be assigned, and we 
content ourselves,, therefore, with the admission that 
the prophecies were completed and in men's hands two 
centuries before our Lord appeared. The admission 
is more than enough. Who can look down through 
the next fifty years, or even the next twenty, and de- 
scribe the changes they will bring? And two cen- 
turies ! Who could lift the veil made of those two 
hundred years, and paint as clearly and livingly as we 
see them now the things which were then to be? 

The predictions with which we are now to deal, 
seem to me sufficient on the very face of them to prove 



I96 PREDICTIONS REGARDING CHRIST. 

the claims of the Old Testament Scriptures and of 
Christianity. Everyone admits that they are woven 
into the very fabric of the Old Testament. "The tes- 
timony of Jesus is the Spirit of Prophecy." All are 
aware that, though the light of the Old Testament was 
at first confined to Israel, it proclaimed from the very 
beginning a "larger hope." The better time, for which 
Israel looked, was to be a time of blessing for all man- 
kind. The blessing was to spring up in Israel, but it 
was not to be confined to Israel. Jew and Gentile 
were alike to rejoice. A new covenant was to be made 
with men, not like that which had been made with 
Israel at Sinai and which had never uprooted sin from 
the heart. The Spirit of God was to be poured out 
upon all flesh. The nations were to cast away their 
idols; for the light was to shine from Zion, and the 
law of the Lord was to go forth from Jerusalem. 

We are so familiar with these and the like predic- 
tions that references are unnecessary. But familiarity 
may conceal their marvellousness. We are all aware 
that in those old times the knowledge of the true God 
was confined to the narrow territory of the Jews ; that 
each people had its own gods ; and that the idea of a 
nation exchanging its religion for another was quite 
foreign to the experience and to the thought of the 
ancient world. Is it not wonderful then to find the 
hope burning on in the Old Testament Scriptures, 
and brightening as the ages advance, that a day would 
come when the idolatries of the nations would be num- 
bered with the things of the past, that the God of 
Israel would be worshipped and served in far-ofif 
lands, and that distant isles would wait for His law? 
That expectation is absolutely without parallel. There 
is nothing like it in any literature besides. Neither 
philosopher nor poet had ever dreamed of a brother- 
hood of man founded upon universal sonship to God. 
How then is it that we find this in the Old Testament 
Scriptures not onl^as an aspiration, but as a clear and 



THE REVOLUTION TO BE THE WORK OF ONE MAN. I97 

oft- repeated prediction, a confident and jubilant ex- 
pectation? Whence was it that this idea, which never 
stirred in human heart besides, fell upon the soil of 
Jewish thought? How did it happen that it remained 
and flourished so that to pour this light upon the na- 
tions was regarded as the destiny of the Jewish people ? 
But add to this that, as these Scriptures said it should 
be, so it has been. The idolatries of the nations have 
disappeared and are disappearing now. The knowl- 
edge of the true God has broken forth like a flood over 
the darkened earth. The far-off isles have received 
His law. And this light, which has enlightened the 
nations, has shone out from Zion, this law has gone 
forth from Jerusalem. Put the strange prediction and 
its wondrous accomplishment together, and shall we 
not say that both are from God? Can any one fail 
to see that the Word and the Work, the Old Testa- 
ment and Christianity, are here alike stamped with 
God's seal? 

But there is more to account for than this strange, 
confident outlook and its equally strange fulfilment 
There was one central figure in Israel's hope; the 
leading back of the nations to God was to be 

THE WORK OF ONE MAN. 

All know how this is stamped upon every promise of 
the world's redemption. From first to last it is to be 
the work of the Messiah. It is He who is to bruise 
the serpent's head. In Him all the nations of the earth 
are to be blessed. "All kings shall fall down before 
Him : all nations, shall serve Him. . . . He shall 
have pity on the poor and needy, and the souls of the 
needy He shall save. . . . His name shall endure 
for ever" (Ps. lxxii). The world's salvation begins, 
is continued, and perfected in Him. So clearly is this 
taught in the Old Testament that the hope of the Jews 
became the hope of the Messiah. The following are 
some of the petitions in their ancient prayers : "O that 



I98 PREDICTIONS REGARDING CHRIST. 

Elias would come quickly with Messias the son of 
David;" "Send the Branch of David in our days;" 
"By the hand of Ben Issai (the son of Jesse) the 
Bethlehemite bring near the redemption; How long 
will He tarry;" "Let the memory of Messias, the son 
of David, thy servant, come before Thee." Numerous 
as are the quotations from the Old Testament, which 
are applied to Jesus in the New, they are far out- 
numbered by the passages applied to the Messiah in 
the Rabbinical writers. They believed that it was the 
one purpose of the Scripture to testify of Him. "The 
Jewish doctors tell us 'that all the prophets, none ex- 
cepted, prophesied only of the years of the redemption, 
and the days of the Messiah/ 'All from Moses our 
Master/ says Maimonides, 'to Malachi of blessed mem- 
ory/ 'They all/ says Abarbanel, 'moved by the Holy 
Ghost, testify and foretell the coming of the Mes- 
siah/ "* 

This, then, was the hope of the Old Testament. It 
was contained in books which we and the Jews alike 
revere to this day, and which were translated into the 
Greek tongue two centuries before Christ came. It 
was so clearly and emphatically announced, it was so 
frequently declared, that it filled the thought of the 
Jewish people with glowing anticipation. And it was 
an expectation which from first to last rested upon one 
man. It was not a blessing which was to come men 
knew not whence, nor how. They looked for the 
Messiah. The hope of Israel and of all peoples lay in 
Him. He alone would touch the world's heart and roll 
away the world's burden. And the work which He 
began, He should continue. His influence was pic- 
tured as going on broadening and deepening through 
all after time: "His name shall be continued as long 
as the sun; and men shall be blessed in Him; all na- 
tions shall call him blessed" (Ps. lxxii. 17). 

*Lyall; Propedeia Prophetica, p. 124. 



THE REVOLUTION TO BE THE WORK OF ONE MAN. 1 99 

Now, it will be admitted that the hope was, in this 
aspect of it, quite as marvellous as in the other of 
which we have already spoken. The Jews were not 
ignorant of the limitations of human greatness. They 
had had great men who had left their impress upon the 
institutions and the life of their country; but none of 
them had ever done, or had ever dreamed of attempt- 
ing, such a work as this. Their plans, like their ac- 
tivity, had been directed to the needs of their own peo- 
ple. Who among them had ever borne upon his heart 
the world's burden, and dreamed of meeting the 
world's need? Who had ever imagined that in him 
all the nations of the earth would be blessed? Then 
their work had been limited by time as well as by 
ability. How often had Israel reason to ask: "the fath- 
ers — where are they? and the prophets — do they live 
for ever?" The mightiest had had to succumb to 
death, and his place was taken and his work was car- 
ried on by some other servant whom God also honoured 
and upheld. The ages had never before been chained 
to any one man. Whence then can the hope have 
sprung that one should be born who would be the 
source of an undying influence, who would dominate, 
and guide, and bless, men not only of His own genera- 
tion but of all after time? And this is not the only 
marvel. The hope was as sure as it was strange. The 
Old Testament Scriptures looked forward with confi- 
dent and glowing anticipation to the coming of One 
who should change the current of the world's thought. 
And we have to testify that One man has appeared — the 
one Man of all time — by whom this has been, and is 
now being, done. The name of Jesus still lives upon 
our lips — His power rests upon our hearts. Call it 
fanaticism if you will ; say, if you choose, that this faith 
in a living Christ, which has endured for eighteen cen- 
turies and is spreading among the tribes of the earth 
to-day, is a hallucination. Let such explanations be 
received with what favour they may, these theories 



200 PREDICTIONS REGARDING CHRIST. 

themselves testify that this faith exists and that it is a 
power. That is to say, one man has arisen, whose 
surpassing excellence they admit, and through faith in 
whom the work, which is bringing nations to God, 
has been carried on through age after age and is being 
carried on now. His name has been "continued ;" men 
are "blessed in Him;" and many nations "call Him 
blessed." Shall we say that it is a mere coincidence 
that this strange hope has been, and is still being, an- 
swered by this strange fact in the world's story? 

The predictions regarding the Messiah would have 
been wonderful had they never advanced beyond these 
points. But, on the other hand, if the fulness of knowl- 
edge which the Old Testament claimed was a reality, 
there was no reason why its revelation of the future 
should not be still more explicit. There was reason 
rather that miracles of prophecy should be gathered 
around this central hope of Scripture more fully than 
elsewhere. And this expectation has been fully realized. 
The nature of the Redeemer's work, and even His 
character and history, are so minutely described that it 
is possible to compile a history of Christ and Chris- 
tianity merely from the prophecies. For one thing 
the Saviour, for whom the world waited, 

WAS TO BE A JEW. 

It was recorded that it was said to Abraham, "in thy 
seed" shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. 
There are other predictions which named the tribe, 
and even the family, from which he was to spring, and 
the very town in which he should be born. I mention 
these latter predictions merely to remind the reader 
how definite and clear the prediction was that the Sav- 
iour of the world was to be a Jew He was to be born 
in a Jewish town, and to be a descendant of the nob- 
lest family in the leading tribe of Israel. Had there 
been no real foresight in these predictions, every step 



THE YEAR OF HIS APPEARING FORETOLD. 201 

taken in the direction of increased definiteness multi- 
plied the chances of exposure. It was going far to 
say that a time was coming when the nations would 
cast away their idols. It was going further to affirm 
that this revolution should be the work of one man. 
But to define the hope still more, and to say that he 
should spring from this race and no other, was to 
court defeat a thousandfold. What, then, is the re- 
sult? The answer can be given in one word. There 
has been no defeat. The blessing for which the world 
waited — the blessing of light, and peace, and strength 
to seek a better way — has come through one man, and 
that man was a Jew. 

We have to mark, however, still greater things than 
these. The readers of the Old Testament were not 
merely told that Christ should come: they were also 
told when He should appear. 

THE VERY YEAR 

when He should be manifested to Israel, and should 
enter upon His work, was fixed centuries before. 
We have already, in the previous chapter, proved the 
wonderful character of the book of Daniel. That book 
has also another claim upon our attention, for it con- 
tains one of the most marvellous predictions regarding 
the Messiah. In the ninth chapter it is recorded that 
tKe prophet was told that "seventy weeks (literally 
"seventy sevens") are decreed upon thy people and 
upon thy holy city, to finish transgression, and to make 
an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, 
and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal 
up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy" 
(Dan. ix. 24). This prolonged description is enough 
to assure us that the finger is here laid upon the advent 
and the work of Christ. It was His alone "to finish 
transgression, to make an end of sins, and to make 
reconciliation for iniquity." We are not, however, 



202 PREDICTIONS REGARDING CHRIST. 

abandoned to the guidance of inference. Christ is 
distinctly named. The prophet was bid to mark that, 
"from the going forth of the commandment to restore 
and to build Jerusalem, unto Messiah (the Anointed 
One), the Prince, shall be seven weeks and three 
score and two weeks" (ver. 25) — that is in all 69 
weeks, or, more literally, 69 sevens. 

To what point in the history of Jesus do these 69 
sevens take us? That is a most important question, 
and it has a distinct answer in the prediction. We 
are told (verse 20) that after the second period, the 
"three score and two weeks," "shall Messiah be cut off, 
but not for himself." The - sevens and the 62 
sevens take us, therefore, to the Messiah's death. 

As to what these "sevens" are, there can be no 
difficulty. The same phrase occurs in Leviticus xxv. 8, 
where "seven sabbaths (or sevens) of years" are spok- 
en of as the period which is to elapse between each 
Jubilee. The Jews indeed were commanded to reckon 
time in this way. Every seventh year the land was to 
enjoy its sabbath and to remain untilled. When seven 
sevens were completed, the Jubilee was proclaimed, 
and every Jewish slave was freed, and every poor 
man's land which had been sold was restored to him 
or to his children. These had been to the Jews, large- 
ly mere ideal institutions. The laws stood upon the 
statute book, but they were not observed. By reckon- 
ing in this way, the years which stood between Israel 
and their hope, it may have been indicated that these 
observances were still demanded by God and that the 
hope was for those who feared and obeyed. At all 
events, the numbers are numbers of years. It seems 
to have been an occasional, if not a customary, mode 
of reckoning time. In Genesis xxix. 27, 28, we read 
that Laban said to Jacob: "Fulfil her week (her sev- 
en) and we will give thee this also for the service 
thou wilt serve with me yet seven other years. And 
Jacob did so, and fulfilled her week (her seven)." 



THE YEAR OF HIS APPEARING FORETOLD. 203 

The 70 sevens are, then, 490 years, and the 69 sevens 
are 483 years. 

But from what point was the reckoning to begin? 
For this the prophet is referred to an event which, 
when the words were spoken, was still future. It was 
the going forth of a commandment to restore and to 
build Jerusalem, which at that time was deserted and 
in ashes. On referring to the Books of Ezra and 
Nehemiah, which give us the history of the period 
immediately following the captivity, we find that four 
decrees are recorded. The first, however, only grants 
permission to the Jews to return and to build the Tem- 
ple (Ezra i. I, 4). There is nothing said about the 
restoring and rebuilding of the city. The second de- 
cree is a mere reiteration of the first. It provides for 
the rebuilding of the Temple and for the supply of 
what is needful for the Temple service (Ezra vi. I, 

12). 

Under that edict of Darius Hystaspis, the building 
of the temple was completed, the priests were arranged 
in divisions, and the ancient temple service was again 
begun (verses 13-22). The third decree was issued 
more than half a century afterwards when Ezra and 
his companions went up from Babylon to Jerusalem 
in the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus. 
"Now this is a copy of the letter that the King Arta- 
xerxes gave unto Ezra the scribe. . . I make a de- 
cree that all they, of the people of Israel and of the 
priests and Levites in my realm, who are minded of 
their own free-will to go up to Jerusalem, go with 
thee. Forasmuch as thou art sent of the king and of 
his seven counsellors to enquire concerning Judah and 
Jerusalem, according to the law of thy God which is 
in thine hand ; and to carry the silver and gold, which 
the king and his counsellors have freely offered unto 
the God of Israel, whose habitation is in Jerusalem, and 
all the silver and gold that thou canst find in all the 
province of Babylon, with the free-will offering of the 



204 PREDICTIONS REGARDING CHRIST. 

people and the priests, offering willingly for the house 
of their God which is in Jerusalem" (vii. 11-16). 
The edict goes on to confer power upon Ezra, to dis- 
pose of the funds committed to his care for the temple 
service, and to call upon the local governors for addi- 
tional help, etc. It concludes with these words: "And 
thou, Ezra, after the wisdom of thy God that is in 
thine hand, set magistrates and judges, who may judge 
all the people that are beyond the river, and all such 
as know the laws of thy God ; and teach ye them that 
know them not. And whosoever will not do the law 
of thy God, and the law of the king, let judgment be 
executed speedily upon him, whether it be unto death, 
or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to 
imprisonment" (25-26). 

That third edict has very generally been regarded 
as the decree "to restore and to build Jerusalem" — a 
view in which I formerly concurred. But a closer 
examination of the terms of the edict does not support 
that conclusion. Those terms are most explicit. Ezra 
is empowered to convey the treasure contributed by 
the king and his counsellors, from Babylon to Jerusa- 
lem, to receive other voluntary offerings, to expend 
the funds, to call upon the "treasurers beyond the riv- 
er" for additional funds, and to appoint magistrates 
and judges. But there is no mention whatever of 
building and restoring Jerusalem; and, if that task 
had been assigned to Ezra, it would be hard indeed to 
explain why, in an edict fully transcribed and elabor- 
ately minute in regard to everything else, no reference 
whatever is made to that important undertaking. 

When we turn to the fourth decree, however, we 
meet for the first time, language which is in significant 
accord with the description of "the commandment" 
spoken of by Daniel. Nehemiah tells us that, when 
Artaxerxes asked "For what dost thou make request," 
he replied : "If it please the king, and if thy servant 
hath found favour in thy sight, that thou wouldst send 



THE YEAR OF HIS APPEARING FORETOLD. 205 

me unto Judah, unto the city of my fathers' sepulchres, 
that I may build it'" (ii. 5). He also begged a letter 
to "Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he may 
give me timber to make beams for the gates of the pal- 
ace which appertained to the house, and for the wall 
of the city, and for the house that I shall enter into. 
And the king granted me according to the good hand 
of my God upon me" (8). Here we have in explicit 
terms an authorisation to Ezra to build the city of his 
fathers' sepulchres; and the fourth decree is conse- 
quently "the commandment to restore and to build Jer- 
usalem." 

To apply these results, we have first of all to inquire 
what those 483 years are. Are they years in every 
respect like the years of our own calendar? There 
are clear indications in Scripture that the Hebrew 
month, like that of Babylonia and of Egypt, consisted 
of 30 days. The year consequently contained 360 days ; 
multiplying those 483 years of the prophecy by 360 so 
as to find the entire number of days, we divide by 
365% and so change them into calendar years. The 
result of this rough and ready, but sufficiently accurate, 
method is that the 483 prophetic years are found to be 
equivalent to 476 years of our ordinary chronology. 

We have to ask next to what special point in the 
past we have to attach this immense measuring line, 
so that we may stretch it onward into the future. The 
narrative in Nehemiah furnishes a perfectly clear 
reply. We are told that the concession was made "in 
the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of Arta- 
xerxes the King" (ii. i). He began to reign in the 
year 465 B. c. He was now in the twentieth year of 
his reign: in other words 19 years of his reign were 
completed and the 20th year was in progress. De- 
ducting these 19 years from 465, we are brought to 
446 b. c. — the year in which the edict was issued "to 
restore and to build Jerusalem." 

A word or two will now complete our demon- 



206 PREDICTIONS REGARDING CHRIST. 

stration. Applying the 476 years of the prediction 
to this point (446 years before the birth of our 
Lord) we find that they bring us down to that 
event and leave 30 years over. That is, the year 30 
a. d. is specified as that of the Saviour's cutting off 
in His crucifixion. While everyone will feel how 
amazing it is that the year and the very month — 
the month Nisan — of our Lord's death should have 
been fixed centuries beforehand, some may imagine 
that there is, nevertheless, a slight inaccuracy. We 
are told (Luke iii. 23) that Jesus entered upon this 
ministry when he was about 30 years of age. The 
year 30 a. d. would, therefore, be the year when 
His ministry began, and not the year of His cruci- 
fixion. But the Scripture is absolutely accurate. 
When the division between time B. c. and time A. d. 
was made in the 6th century of our era, a mistake 
of four years was made, the year 1 a. d. was really 
the year 5 a. d. ; and the year 10 the year 14 a. d. ; 
and the year 30 the year 34 a. d. Our Lord's min- 
istry extended about four years; and thus the 
year 30 a d. in our chronology was really the year 
of our Lord's death. The chronology was in error, 
but there was no error in the Scripture; and that 
sacrifice, which will be remembered and celebrated 
throughout eternity, was offered at the appointed 
time. 

Comment on these facts is needless. They tell 
their own tale and leave their own impress. I pass 
on to note how fully 

THE HISTORY OF JESUS 

was revealed in the mirror of prophecy. There are 
some predictions, such as those regarding the 
family from which He was to spring and the place 
where He was to be born, the accomplishment of 
which, however undeniable it might be to the men 
of the time # would now be hard to prove. These I 



HIS CHARACTER DEPICTED. 207 

pass over. But it was predicted that His condition 
should be one of 

LOWLINESS AND POVERTY. 

Though born of the royal house, that house was 
ere then to be shorn of its splendour. The tree was 
to be cut down to the level of the grass, which once 
grew under its shade. "There shall come forth a 
root out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his 
roots shall bear fruit" (Isaiah xi. i). His condition 
was to be one which men would regard with great 
contempt: the Scripture pointed "to Him whom 
man despiseth, to Him whom the nation abhorreth, 
a servant of rulers" (Isaiah xlix. 7). There was 
to be nothing of superior station or worldly wealth 
to commend Him to Israel He was to be as "a root 
out of a dry ground, He hath no form nor comeli- 
ness, and when we see Him there is no beauty that 
we should desire Him" (Isaiah liii. 2). How com- 
pletely this was fulfilled we know. He was a car- 
penter's son. He himself was called "the carpen- 
ter." He had no "advantages." His knowledge 
seemed inexplicable to the men of His time. "How 
knoweth this man letters," they asked, "having 
never learned?" He could offer no worldly induce- 
ment to his followers. "The foxes have holes," He 
said to one, "and the birds of the air have nests, 
but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head." 
So low had the fortunes of the ancient royal house 
sunk that, in the times immediately preceding, they 
had not furnished a single claimant for the throne, 
and when Vespasian afterwards made diligent 
search for the descendants of the hero-king, that 
he might crush every possible seed of rebellion, they 
were found to be so poor and abject that they 
were dismissed with contempt. 
Then He was to be 

REJECTED BY ISRAEL. 



208 PREDICTIONS REGARDING JESUS. 

The coming of the Messiah had been the hope of 
Israel for well-nigh two thousand years e His ad- 
vent was longed for, and prayed for daily, through 
all their generations. Had this hope been the off- 
spring of enthusiasm, nourished by national vanity, 
it would be difficult to explain how, along with this 
anticipation, there should be the most distinct pre- 
dictions that He would be rejected and abhorred 
by the very people who so intensely desired His 
appearing. And yet this is what we do find. The 
prophet, looking forward to the day of the Messiah, 
exclaims: "When we see Him there is no beauty 
that we should desire Him. He was despised and 
rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted 
with grief; and as one from whom men hide their 
face, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not" 
(Isaiah liii. 3). I have already quoted the words 
which speak of Him as one "whom man despiseth. 
. . whom the nation abhor reth" (Isaiah xlix. 7). 
Those who doubt the full inspiration of Scripture 
have yet to give some rational explanation of this 
fact among others, how such a forecast as this came 
to find a place in the portraiture of the Messiah, 
and how it has happened that it has also been liter- 
ally fulfilled Not only was He rejected by the 
Jews of His own time: the rejection has been per- 
petuated to the present hour. No prediction could 
have seemed more improbable, and yet none ever 
received a sadder and more complete fulfilment. 
The Messiah was also 

TO SUFFER A VIOLENT DEATH. 

He was to be "cut off" (Daniel ix. 26). "He was 
taken away. . . He was cut off out of the land 
of the living" (Isa. liii. 8). He was to die under a 

JUDICIAL SENTENCE. 

"By oppression and judgment He was taken away" 
(Isa. liii. 8). Even 



THE MANNER OF HIS DEATH DESCRIBED. 20g 

THE MANNER AND THE CIRCUMSTANCES 

of His death were foretold. "I am poured out like 
water, and all My bones are out of joint : My heart 
is like wax; it is melted in the midst of My bowels. 
My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and My 
tongue cleaveth to My jaws ; and Thou has brought 
Me into the dust of death For dogs have com- 
passed Me: the assembly of evil-doers have enclosed 
Me; they pierced My hands and My feet 3 ' (Ps. xxii. 
14, 16). "I gave My back to the smiters and My 
cheeks to them who plucked off the hair : I hid 
not my face from shame and spitting" (Isaiah 1. 6). 
"All they that see Me, laugh Me to scorn. They 
shoot out the lip, they shake the head saying: He 
trusted on the Lord that He would deliver Him: 
let Him deliver Him seeing He delighteth in Him. 
. . . They part My garments among them, and 
upon My vesture do they cast lots" (Ps. xxii. 7, 8, 
18). We do not read these words for the first time. 
We may have often thought of them as a marvellous 
description of the sufferings of Jesus ; but have we 
ever pondered the fact that they are prophecy, and 
tliat they were written centuries before that life was 
lived? What does it mean? Is it not God's sum- 
mons to believe and accept His salvation? 
The predictions also supply a full description of 

THE CHARACTER OF JESUS. 

They speak of His ardent devotion, His complete 
surrender to God. "I delight to do Thy will, O 
My God : yea, Thy law is within My heart" (Pa xi. 
8). They explain the fulness of wisdom and spir- 
itual might which marked Him : "The Spirit of the 
Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and 
understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the 
spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord" 
(Isaiah xi. 2). They speak of the patience of Jesus. 
There was to be no rude haste to snatch an early 



210 PREDICTIONS REGARDING JESUS. 

victory. He was to be no leader in tumultuous 
assault even upon wrong. "He shall not cry, nor 
lift up, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street" 
(Isaiah xlii. 2). They tell of the lowliness of Jesus. 
The greatness of Christ was not to remove Him 
from us and shut Him up in a world of His own. 
There was to be might without its pride, wisdom 
without its haughty disdain, holiness without its 
blighting scorn of weakness and sin. "A bruised 
reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall 
He not quench" (Isaiah xliii. 3). "He shall feed 
His flock like a shepherd, He shall gather the lambs 
in His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall 
gently lead those that give suck" (Isaiah xl. 11). 
Can we see the Redeemer more clearly in the Gos- 
pels themselves than He is revealed here? And if 
not, is not this fact alone enough to prove that He 
is God's gift to us ? That life no man could have looked 
for, far less painted. It was an absolutely new ex- 
perience for humanity. Its appearance caused a 
new departure in thought and morals. It revolu- 
tionised human ideas of greatness and excellence. 
And yet that life and spirit are not only indicated — 
they are gloriously displayed in what are held forth 
as announcements of One who is yet to come, and 
to bring back the earth to God. We are told, cen- 
turies before He appears, that this is to be His 
character. It was much to have heard of old the 
voice from heaven, and to have felt one's spirit thrill 
in answer to the cry "this is my beloved Son in 
whom I am well pleased." But this is a fuller and 
surer testimony. One might have been mistaken 
as to whence, or from whom, the cry came. The 
thought might have fallen like a blight that the 
whole experience was a dream. But this is no 
dream, and here there is no possibility of mistake. 
When no other could, God snowed us His Son, so 
to speak, that we might know Him when He came. 
And now that He has appeared, who can forbear 



HIS WORK DESCRIBED. 211 

exclaiming "this is indeed the Christ, tHe Saviour 
of the world !" 

The reader need hardly be reminded how fully 

THE WORK OF JESUS 

is described in prophecy. He was to give light; 
He Himself was to be light. "The people that 
walked in darkness have seen a great light: they 
that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon 
them hath the light shined" (Isa. ix. 2). He was to 
be given "for a covenant of the people, for a light 
to the Gentiles, to open the blind eyes, to bring out 
the prisoners from the dungeon, and them that sit 
in darkness out of the prison house'' (Isa. xlii. 6, 7). 
"I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles that 
thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the 
earth" (Isa. xlix. 6). He was to touch the whole 
earth and bless it with peace and power. "Like as 
many were astonished at thee ... so shall he 
sprinkle many nations" (Isaiah Hi. 14, 15). "He 
shall not fail, nor be discouraged, till He had set 
judgment in the earth, and the isles shall wait for 
His law" (Isa. xlii 4). 

But this fulness of power and blessing was to be 
reached through suffering. We have seen that the 
Messiah was to die. That death had an explanation. 
It was written "thou shalt make His soul an offer- 
ing for sin" (Isaiah liii. 10) ; and again, "Although 
He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in 
His mouth, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him, 
He hath put Him to grief" (vv. 9, 10). What all 
this meant for us the prophet has explained in the 
verse immediately preceding. "Surely He hath 
borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. . . . 
He was wounded for our transgressions, He was 
bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our 
peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are 
healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray, we 



212 PREDICTIONS REGARDING JESUS. 

have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord 

HATH LAID ON HlM THE INIQUITY OF US ALL" (w. 4, 

6). The work of Christ is described in similar terms 
in Dan. ix. 24. It was "to make reconciliation for 
iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness. " 
There is also a striking prediction to the same effect 
in Zechariah ix. 11. God is speaking concerning 
His Messiah who "shall speak peace unto the na- 
tions/' and whose "dominion shall be from sea to 
sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth," 
and He continues : "As for Thee also, because of 
the blood of Thy covenant I have sent forth Thy 
prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water." They 
are shut in with death ; but they are His, and they 
are released on one ground alone — "the blood of 
Thy covenant." Great difficulties have been felt by 
many in regard to the doctrine of substitution. It 
has been arraigned as the fruit of superstition, or 
of terrible misconception. The whole body of or- 
dinary teaching on the subject has been named "the 
blood theology," and been cast on one side as if 
that description were sufficient condemnation. It 
will be admitted that there may be aspects from 
which the question might be so viewed as greatly to 
alter our judgment of it. Far as our philosophy has 
reached, it is still true that there are things in 
heaven and earth not dreamed of in it But we 
have to deal here with God's thought, not man's. 
The words are stamped as His, for they display 
clear and full knowledge of what no man, when the 
words were spoken, could foresee even dimly. They 
are, therefore, God's statement of what the death of 
Christ means, and not man's explanation of it. The 
prediction is an attestation, not to the Lord's mis- 
sion only, but also to the doctrine of "forgiveness 
through His blood." It is the seal of God's cov- 
enant with us in Christ. It is the Divine assurance 
that the wondrous tale of the cross is true. "All we 
like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every 



HIS PRESENT WORK. 21 3 

one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on 
him the iniquity of us all." 

I may notice in conclusion, a prophetic testimony 
of equally vital import, namely, that 

JESUS LIVES AND SAVES. 

We find in the predictions a strange conjunction of 
death and after-service — service which, notwith- 
standing death, is to be rendered in the midst of 
men, and by Him who died for them. In the 22nd 
Psalm, He, whose hands and feet were "pierced," 
whose garments were divided, and upon whose 
raiment they cast lots, looks forward to work which 
He will nevertheless do for God on the earth. "I 
will declare Thy name unto my brethren, in the 
midst of the congregation will I praise Thee" (Ps. 
xxii. 22). In that prophetic hymn of the humiliation 
and death of Christ, which we have already referred 
to — the 53rd of Isaiah — this strange testimony is 
still clearer. After saying how it pleased the Lord 
to bruise Him and put Him to grief, the prophet 
proceeds : "When thou shalt make His soul an offer- 
ing for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong 
his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper 
in His hand. He shall see of the travail of His soul 
and shall be satisfied. By His knowledge shall My 
righteous servant justify many, for He shall bear 
their iniquities. Therefore will I divide Him a 
portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil 
wth the strong, because He poured out His soul 
unto death, and was numbered with the transgres- 
sors. Yet He bore the sin of many and made inter- 
cession for the transgressors" (Isa. liii. 10-12). 

Other predictions are equally emphatic as to the 
unceasing activity and undying influence of the Re- 
deemer. But here the fulness of His triumph over 
death and the oblivion, which at the close of life's 
brief day, falls in deepening darkness upon human 



214 PREDICTIONS REGARDING JESUS. 

work and fame, are put so clearly that we need no 
testimony besides. Death does not shut out from 
His view the scene of His earthly labours. "He 
shall see His seed," "He shall see of the travail of 
His soul, and shall be satisfied." Death does not 
even end His earthly activity. "The pleasure of the 
Lord shall prosper in His hand." He shall "justify 
many." "H e shall divide the spoil with the strong." 
Next in point of difficulty to the doctrine of the 
Atonement stands this, that Jesus is a present 
Saviour — that to-day, as of old, He hears the cry of 
need, and will accept, and bless, and save. But 
here again difficulty is met by the Divine assurance. 
These words are God's, for no other could have told 
of Christ's advent, or pictured His character, or 
told the story of His suffering and work. If any 
other could, then put the words aside; pay no heed 
to this wondrous testimony about a living, present 
Christ, for the words may in that case be merely 
man's. But, if they bear the stamp of a knowledge 
that is infinite, we know that they came from One 
who will not deceive, and who cannot err. To men 
of old the predictions spoke of one who said "I 
come." To us now they tell of one whose word is: 
"Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man 
hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to 
him and will sup with him and he with Me." 



CHAPTER X. 

PREDICTIONS FULFILLED IN THE HISTORY OF THE 

JEWS. 

We shall now close our readings, in the fulfilled 
prophecies of Scripture, with a rapid survey of those 
which bear upon the fortunes of the Jews. We 
have seen something of the testimony which God 
has borne to His word, to Christ, and to some of 
the leading doctrines of that faith, which we are 
told forms the pathway to eternal life. It may be 
well, then, that we should be reminded that where 
God sheds light He expects obedience, and that the 
possession of privileges has its duties and its pen- 
alties. 

In another respect it may be well that this should 
form the terminus of our inquiries. We have hith- 
erto been dealing with regions and events far from 
us, and the force which closer acquaintance and 
fuller knowledge would have given to conviction 
has been wanting. But the Jews, scattered every- 
where and dwelling in our own midst, bring the 
claims home to us both of the Old Testament and of 
the New. The Bible lives in the Jew. His whole 
history is a testimony to its historic truth: in his 
present customs, in his very separateness, we see 
the impress of events, the reality of which many 
have doubted, and some have denied ; and he teaches 
us that God's hand rests on the life of to-day as 
truly as it rested on the life of the past. 



2l6 PREDICTIONS REGARDING THE JEWS. 

Perhaps the most startling fact in connection with 
the Jewish race is its attitude towards Christianity. 
We know that the Gospel was preached to the Jew 
before it was declared to the Gentile, and that many 
received the message The foundations of the new 
faith were laid among the followers of the old. All 
the apostles, without a single exception, were Jews. 
The first preachers of the Gospel, who went every- 
where preaching the word, were also of the same 
race; and multitudes of their countrymen, both at 
home and abroad, rejoiced in the assurance of for- 
giveness through the blood of Christ. But, when 
all this has been admitted, the fact remains that, by 
nearly the whole race then, and by the entire race 
ever since, the Messiah has been rejected and 
sqorned. This unanimous and persistent repudia- 
tion of the claims of Jesus by His own people is not 
devoid of difficulty, and the difficulty is increased 
when we remember that for long ages this nation 
had been trained to know God's mind, and had been 
prepared by prophecy and by the institutions of the 
law to receive Christ when He came. 

If we were asked, then, to explain the rejection of 
Jesus by His own people, we might not be able to 
wholly remove the impression that it throws doubt upon 
the claims of the Gospel. But the prophecies, which 
the Jews cherish as well as we, turn this, which 
might have been used as an argument against Chris- 
tianity, into one of the strongest testimonies to its truth. 

THE REJECTION WAS FORETOLD. 

We are familiar, for example, with the words of 
Isaiah. The prophet exclaims, as he looks onward, 
to the Gospel day and searches for the fruits among 
his people of the labours of those who, with himself, 
have been proclaiming Jesus: "Who hath believed 
our report, and to whom hath the arm of the Lord 
been revealed?" (liii. i.) He breaks out into lamen- 



THE INSTRUMENTS OF THEIR PUNISHMENT. 217 

tation over Israel's rejection of Him of whom he 
has just predicted that He shall "sprinkle many 
nations" (Hi. 15), and exclaims: "When we see Him 
there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He 
was despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows 
and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom 
men hide their face He was despised, and we es- 
teemed Him not" (liii. 2, 3). The Jews regarded 
the crucifixion of Jesus as disproving all His claims, 
and yet, seven centuries before His blood stained 
the sod of Calvary, it was declared they should so 
regard it: "Surely He hath borne our griefs and 
carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem Him stricken, 
smitten of God, and afflicted" (liii. 4). 

Similar announcements meet us elsewhere That 
which is yet to be "the headstone of the corner" is 
"the stone which the builders refused" (Ps. cxviii. 
22). Blindness was to fall upon Israel: "Tarry ye 
and wonder; take your pleasure and be blind: they 
are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but 
not with strong drink. For the Lord hath poured 
out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath 
Closed your eyes ; the prophets and your heads, the 
seers hath He covered. And all vision is become to 
you as the words of a book that is sealed, which 
men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read 
this, I pray thee; and he saith, I cannot, for it is 
sealed ; and the book is delivered to him that is not 
learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee : and he saith, 
I am not learned" (Isa. xxix. 9-1). Therefore the 
Redeemer exclaims: "I have laboured in vain, I 
have spent My strength for nought and vanity;" 
and while He is described as "a light to the Gen- 
tiles," He is in the same breath spoken of as "one 
whom man despiseth — whom the nation abhorreth" 
f (Isa. xlix. 4, 6, 7). This is, in fact, one of the great 
outstanding features in the prophetic portraiture of 
the Messiah. If, therefore, Israel had accepted, and 
not rejected, Jesus, that would have been one of 



2l8 PREDICTIONS REGARDING THE JEWS. 

the strongest possible arguments against Christi- 
anity. It would have proved that He was not the 
Messiah whose advent had been foretold. On the 
other hand, in these predictions and their accom- 
plishment we have another seal to the Gospel. The 
rejection is one more test, placed in our hands by 
God Himself, whereby we might know whether He 
whose name should be declared to us was indeed the 
Saviour of the world ; and Israel's abhorrence of the 
Nazarene is their unconscious testimony that this 
indeed is He. 

Another difficulty in Israel's rejection of the Mes- 
siah is its long continuance. One generation may 
err, but succeeding generations review the decisions 
of the past and judge righteous judgment. There 
was much in the case of the Jews to suggest and to 
guide such a review. The terrible discipline, 
through which they have passed, might have hum- 
bled and enlightened them. It might have been 
thought also that it was impossible for them to dwell 
for 18 centuries in the midst of Christian nations, 
with the name of Jesus for ever in their ears, with 
the gospels spread before them, and the testimony 
of their own prophets continually under their eyes, 
without acknowledging the mistake or rebellion of 
their fathers. And yet, in spite of all, their rejection 
of Jesus has been perpetuated, and is as resolute 
to-day as it ever has been. This, we repeat, is a 
farther difficulty, and one which, taken by itself, 
might form a stumbling-block in the pathway of 
belief. It might be hard, perhaps impossible, for 
us to explain how the testimony of those prophecies, 
which the Jews revere as the Word of God, has 
failed to convince them that Jesus is the Messiah. 
But here again the objection is really one of the 
strongest confirmations. This, too, was predicted. 

THE LONG-CONTINUED REJECTION 

of Christianity by the Jews is distinctly prophesied 



THEIR SUFFERINGS. 2ig 

in the Old Testament and the New. Isaiah at the 
outset of his ministry has a vision of the Lord, who 
has come to His Temple, and whose glory fills it. 
But, while he is sent to Israel with God's word, he 
is told that the vision which he has seen will not 
be given to them. "And he said, go and tell this 
people : Hear ye indeed, but understand not, and see 
ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of 
this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut 
their eyes ; lest they see with their eyes, and hear 
with their ears, and understand with their heart, and 
turn again and be healed/' The prophet asks how 
long the doom of blindness is to rest upon Israel, 
and receives the reply: "Until cities be waste with- 
out inhabitant, and houses without man, and the 
land become utterly waste, and the Lord have re- 
moved men far away, and the forsaken places be 
many in the midst of the land" (Isaiah vi. 9-12). 

It is clear, therefore, that the blindness of the Jews 
was to be long continued, was to be continued, 
indeed, during the long ages in which the land 
of Israel was to be depopulated, so wasted that its 
very fruitfulness was to pass away. The pre- 
diction »in the New Testament is still more defin- 
ite. In the Epistle to the Romans the apostle Paul 
speaks of his "heart's desire and supplication to 
God" that Israel may be saved. But he holds out 
no hope to his readers of an immediate answer to 
his prayer. Israel will not return till the time 
of God's forbearance with the Gentiles has expired. 
"For I would not, brethren, have you ignorant 
of this mystery, lest ye be wise in your own con- 
ceits, that a hardening in part hath befallen Israel, 

UNTIL THE FULNESS OF THE GENTILES BE COME IN" 

(Romans xi. 25), that is, till the time come when 
God shall judge them as He has judged His ancient 
people. Others understand the words as referring 
to mercy, not to judgment, and believe that they in- 



220 PREDICTIONS REGARDING THE JEWS. 

dicate the ingathering of all the Gentile nations into 
the kingdom of God. In either case it is clear that 
the rejection of Jesus by Israel was to continue to the 
present time and beyond it. This difficulty, therefore, 
like the other, is another testimony to the truth of 
God's word and to the Gospel which He has declared. 
The Jew confirms by his very rejection the claims 
which He scorns. 

This, however, is only the beginning of the story. 
The sin was to be visited with judgment. Daniel 
in connection with his prediction regarding the 
Messiah, which we have already considered, an- 
nounces the destruction of Jerusalem and the tem- 
ple : "The people of the prince that shall come shall 
destroy the city and the sanctuary" (Dan. ix. 26). 
Zechariah, writing after the return from Babylon, 
speaks of another terrible calamity for his people. 
The land is to be spoiled, Israel is to be given over 
to slaughter, and to be sold into slavery, "For I 
will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith 
the Lord" (Zech. xi. 1-6). Malachi, the last of the 
prophets, also hints at a rejection of Israel contem- 
poraneous with the calling of the Gentiles. "I have 
no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts, neither 
will I accept an offering at your hand. For from 
the rising of the sun even unto the going down of 
the same, My name is great among the Gentiles" 
(Malachi i. 10, 11). 

We shall mainly confine ourselves, however, to 
the more ancient prophecies in Leviticus and Deu- 
teronomy, to which we have referred in an earlier 
chapter. There, on the foundation of their insti- 
tutions as a nation, it was written, not only that 
God would punish persistent rebellion, but also how 
He would punish it. The picture of the Divine 
judgment is full of minute details: it is painted 
in vivid colours. There may be some doubt, it is 
true, as to the application of these predictions to 



THE INSTRUMENTS USED IN PUNISHING THE JEWS. 221 

the rejection of the MessiaK. But this doubt, if it 
exists, will be dissipated by a moment's reflection. 
No other sin that Israel ever committed could equal 
their rejection of Him, to serve and aid whom in 
His mission to the nations they existed as a people. 
For them to reject God's covenant for themselves, to 
attempt to bring to nought God's plan for the world's 
redemption, and to fight, as they did for ages, against 
God's effort to bring the nations to Himself, was 
the most daring rebellion in which Israel had ever 
engaged. If Christianity is of God, and these are 
God's words, they must find their full accomplish- 
ment in the history of Israel at and since the begin- 
ning of the Christian era. If they had not been so 
fulfilled, there could have been no more certain proof 
either that the words were not of God, or that 
Christianity was not from Him, and that in reject- 
ing and attempting to defeat it, the Jews were not 
rejecting and seeking the overthrow of anything 
which could be called the counsel of God. 

Turning now to the prediction in Deuteronomy, 
we note that those who were to be 

THE INSTRUMENTS IN PUNISHING ISRAEL 

are described. If the words had been meant merely 
as a threat, and not as an unveiling of the future, 
the materials for impressive writing lay at hand 
What could have impressed Israel more than to 
hold over them the menace of a return to the fiery 
furnace of Egyptian bondage? Or some of the 
neighbouring and dreaded nations of the time might 
have been named as their conquerors and oppres- 
sors. But to none of these did the warning point. 
The chastisement was not to be the consequence of 
ordinary aggression. It was to bear upon it from 
first to last the stamp of Divine judgment. "The 
Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, 
from the end of the earth, as the eagle flieth; a 



222 PREDICTIONS REGARDING THE JEWS. 

nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand: a 
nation of fierce countenance" (Deuteronomy xxviii: 
49, 50). It is hardly necessary to remind the reader 
how wonderfully these words were fulfilled in the 
case of the Romans. They came from far, from the 
ends of the earth. Theirs was a speech the Jews 
did not understand. They were men of fierce aspect. 
Let me, however, again remind him that this pre- 
diction could scarcely have resulted from a calcu- 
lation of probabilities. We may be occasionally dis- 
turbed by a dread of national chastisement, but, if 
we were to don the prophet's mantle and speak of 
coming invasion, should we not inevitably think of 
nations known to us as the probable instruments of 
vengeance? If the writer of Deuteronomy had been 
moved by the thoughts of his own heart, this course 
would have been as natural to him as it is to us. 
But he turned away from every people then known 
to Israel, and said "Your punishment will come 
from none of these. A people from far, from the 
ends of the earth, a people whose speech you will 
not understand — they will be the sword in the hand 
of God." What shall we say of it? If the words 
are not God's, then their presence on the page of 
Scripture must be due to one of the most wonderful 
freaks of chance of which we have any record. 

Whether they are due to chance or not, will be 
made abundantly clear ere we have finished. The 
words proceed to speak of 

THE MERCILESSNESS OF THESE MINISTERS OF 
VENGEANCE. 

They were to be "a nation of fierce countenance, 
which shall not regard the person of the old, nor 
shew favour to the young" (Deut. xxviii. 50). We 
have often heard of the stern necessities of war, but 
these necessities were never more ruthlessly en- 
forced than by the Romans. In their stern disci- 



USElk TREATMENT AMONG THE GENTILES. 2^3 

pline there was no room for pity. There was no 
soft spot in that iron heart, to which either age or 
infancy could make its appeal. Those who could be 
sold as slaves, who could fight in the cruel sports of 
their amphitheatres, or adorn the triumph of their 
general, might be spared, but they never troubled 
themselves with useless incumbrances. Josephus 
tells how at Tiberias, even where the people had 
been promised their lives, the old men and those 
who "were useless" were put to the sword. The 
same course was followed at Jerusalem and else- 
where. They regarded not the person of the old, 
nor did they shew favour to the young. 

Another feature in the punishment of Israel was, 
that, though Egypt was not to be the means of their 
overthrow, it was nevertheless to be concerned in 
their degradation. They were to be 

TAKEN BACK TO EGYPT IN SHIPS. 

"And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again 
with ships" (ver. 68). Of those saved at Jerusalem, 
all who were over 17 years of age were sent to 
labour in the Egyptian mines, where the prisoners 
were kept at work day and night without intermis- 
sion, or the slightest interval of sleep, till they fell 
down and died. "The vast numbers," says Dio- 
dorus, "employed in these mines are bound in fetters 
and compelled to work day and night without inter- 
mission and without the least hope of escape. No 
attention is paid to their persons; they have not 
even a piece of rag to cover themselves; and so 
wretched is their condition that every one who 
witnesses it deplores the excessive misery they en- 
dure. No rest, no intermission from toil, are given 
either to the sick or maimed ; neither the weakness 
of age nor woman's infirmities are regarded ; all are 
driven to their work with the lash, till, at last, over- 
come with the intolerable weight of their afflictions, 



224 PREDICTIONS REGARDING THE JEWS. 

they die in the midst of their toil "* It was a more 
terrible bondage than that from which God had freed 
their fathers. Besides these, vast multitudes were 
sold into slavery. The markets were glutted, and 
the words were accomplished: "No man shall buy 
you" (ver. 68). 97,000, according to Josephus, were 
carried away captive from Jerusalem alone. This 
number was increased by a large part of the popula- 
tion of Judea and Galilee. Wherever resistance had 
been offered to the Roman arms, captivity was the 
mildest fate granted to the vanquished. On the 
suppression of the rising under Barcochebas in the 
next century all the horrors of the previous war 
were repeated. "They were reduced to slavery/' 
says Milman, "by thousands. There was a great 
fair held under a celebrated Terebinth, which tra- 
dition had consecrated as the very tree under which 
Abraham had pitched his tent. Thither his mis- 
erable children were brought in droves, and sold as 
cheap as horses. Others were carried away and sold 
at Gaza ; others were transported to Egypt "If 

This forms only a small part, however, of the 
prophetic description of those sufferings and calam- 
ities, which were to make that terrible time to be 
forever remembered as a time of judgment. One 
characteristic of the war was to be 

ITS SIEGES. 

"He shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy 
high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou 
trustedst, throughout all thy land : and he shall be- 
siege thee in all thy g-ates, throughout all thy land, 
which the Lord thy God giveth thee." This was by 
no means an ordinary incident in Jewish warfare. 
The wars conducted by the Maccabees were wars of 
battles. They met their enemies in the field. The 

* Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, ii., pp. 143-144. 
t Milman, History of the Jews, ii., p. 436. 



Th£ character OF THE BATTLES. 22$ 

Jews pursued Cestius when he retreated from Jeru- 
salem, and they made a disastrous attack on Asca- 
lon, but with these exceptions the war was, as here 
described, a war of sieges. In previous struggles 
there had been battles, the names of which awoke 
memories of joy or sorrow in the breasts of the 
children of Israel, but now their story is the story 
of towns besieged and stormed. The names Jota- 
pata, Japha, Tarichea, Gamala, Itabyrium, Gischala, 
Jerusalem, Herodion, Machaerus, Massada, which 
appear in the history of the campaigns, are the 
names, not of stricken fields, but of captured cities 
and fortresses. I repeat that this was not a neces- 
sary feature of the war. The armies of Israel might 
have been defeated on their plains or on their moun- 
tains, and the cities might, as a consequence of the 
defeat, have surrendered. But the contest is pic- 
tured as one of infatuation or despair. It is war to 
the death. The battle raged wherever there was a 
chance of resistance, and the Romans had to fight 
their way through the land step by step, reducing 
one stronghold after another. Even after Jerusalem 
had fallen, as fierce a stand was made at Machaerus 
and Massada. "He shall besiege thee in all thy 
gates throughout all thy land which the Lord thy 
God giveth thee." 
We may notice also what is said of 

THE METHOD OF ATTACK. 

'Tie shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high 
and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst." 
Josephus describes the terrors of the Roman batter- 
ing-ram. When it is "pulled backward," he says, 
"by a great number of men with united forces, and 
then thrust forward by the same men with a mighty 
noise, it tatters the walls with that iron part which 
is promihent: nor is there any tower so strong, nor 
walls so bioad, that can resist any more than its 



226 PREDICTIONS REGARDING THE JEWS. 

first batteries, but all are forced to yield to it at 
last." He describes its effects at Jotapata, where 
he commanded : "Now at the very first stroke of this 
engine the wall was shaken, and a terrible clamour 
was raised by the people within the city, as if they 
were already taken." The result here, as every- 
where besides, was that not only was a breach made 
and the city taken, but, in accordance with the 
orders of Vespasian, the city was "entirely demol- 
ished and all the fortifications burned down." Their 
high and fenced walls came down wherein they trusted. 
Then the prophecy presents a vivid picture of the 
sufferings of the people. They were to endure 

THE EXTREMITIES OF FAMINE. 

It was to be no ordinary tale of want and suffering, 
but one such that the ears of everyone that heard 
it should tingle. "Thou shalt eat the fruit of thine 
own body, the flesh of thy sons and thy daughters, 
which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the 
siege and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies 
shall straiten thee. The man that is tender among 
you and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward 
his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and 
toward the remnant of his children which he hath 
remaining: so that he will not give to any of them 
the flesh of his children whom he shall eat. . . 
The tender and delicate woman among you which 
would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon 
the ground for delicateness and tenderness, . . 
she shall eat them (her children) for want of all 
things secretly" (Deut. xxviii. 53-57). So closely 
was this terrible prediction fulfilled that history in 
this case seems but the echo of prophecy. "The 
famine was too hard," says Josephus, "for all other 
passions, . . . insomuch that children pulled 
the very morsels that their fathers were eating out 
of their very mouths, and, what was still more to 



THEIR SUFFERINGS. 227 

be pitied, so did the mothers do to their infants ; and, 
when those that were most dear were perishing 
under their hands, they were not ashamed to take from 
them the very last drops that might preserve their 
lives." And he tells, with evident reluctance (for he 
was still a Jew, and knew he was exposing the shame 
of his country to the eyes of Gentile readers), of a 
certain woman named Mary, "eminent for her family 
and her wealth" who by reason of the want of all 
things "in the siege and in the straitness," "slew her 
son ; and they roasted him, and ate the one half of him, 
and kept the other half by her concealed." 
They were also to be 

"left few in number" 

(Deut. xxviii. 62). Summing up the numbers given 
by Josephus, it appears that 1,356,460 were slain and 
101,700 carried away captive. But he only gives the 
number of prisoners in Jerusalem and two other places, 
and there were many losses which he omits, "besides 
the immense waste of life from massacre, famine, and 
disease, inseparable from such a war in almost every 
district."* This terrible total was swelled through in- 
surrection and massacre in other parts of the Roman 
Empire, and was further increased by the atrocities 
perpetrated by the Romans in suppressing the out- 
break under Barochebas. Of that "massacre the Rab- 
bins tell frightful stories, but their horror is mitigated 
by their extravagance. More are said to have fallen 
at Bither than escaped with Moses from Egypt. The 
horses waded up to their bits in carnage. Blood flowed 
so copiously, that the stream carried stones weighing 
four pounds into the sea, according to their account, 
forty miles distant. The dead covered eighteen square 
miles, and the inhabitants of the adjacent regions had 
no need to manure their ground for seven years. A 

* History of the Jews, ii., p. 381. 



22& PREDICTIONS REGARDING THE JEWS. 

more trustworthy authority, Dion Cassius, states that 
during the whole war the enormous number of 580,000 
fell by the sword, not including those who perished 
by famine, disease, and fire. The whole of Judea was 
a desert; wolves and hyaenas went howling along the 
streets of the desolate cities."* 

But the predictions are not bounded by the judg- 
ments which marked the end of the Jewish nation in 
Palestine. They have also told their after story. We 
noticed in a former chapter the prophecy, that they 
should be swept from off the land which God had 
given them: "Ye shall be plucked from off the land 
whither thou goest in to possess it" (Deut. xxviii. 63). 
It may be enough to remark now that, from the time 
of the Emperor Hadrian to the present, they have 
never been permitted to call that land their own. Men 
of every nationality and faith have been more at home 
in the ancient land of Israel than the despised and 
downtrodden Jew. 

We proceed to follow their after history as it is de- 
picted in prophecy, and we mark first of all 

THEIR UNIVERSAL DISPERSION. 

"And the Lord shall scatter thee among all peoples 
from the one end of the earth even unto the other end 
of the earth" (Deut. xxviii. 64) ; "And you will I scat- 
ter among the nations" (Leviticus xxvi. 33). These 
words have been so fully accomplished that the disper- 
sion of the Jews has long been one of the common- 
places of history. The Jew is found in every land, 
from north to south, from east to west. Even to-day, 
accustomed as we are to the commingling of nation- 
alities, the dispersion of Israel strikes us with aston- 
ishment. To no other nation would these words have 
applied. Can we explain how they have been so abun- 
dantly fulfilled in the fate of the one people of whom 

* Ibid., ii., pp. 435-436. 



THEIR DISPERSION AND THEIR PRESERVATION. 22Q 

they were spoken? The fulfilments of other predic- 
tions have been far removed from the scope of our ob- 
servation, and have not summoned us, so to speak, as 
God's witnesses. But this touches us. It is a fulfil- 
ment in our own day, and in our own land. It is one 
which we have no need to search out and make our- 
selves acquainted with. It has been laid fully before 
us; it is among the thing we have long known. And 
now what is the testimony we have to offer ? Is it not 
that the book which declared this from of old bears 
upon it here the Divine seal? 

This, however, is only part of the picture. It was 
foretold that, though dispersed, 

THEY SHOULD BE PRESERVED. 

That a nation, deprived of its fatherland, wandering 
over all the earth without any home or rallying-place, 
deprived, too, as we shall immediately see, of the chief 
ceremonies and institutions of the religion which had 
been the main instrument in binding them together as 
a people — that a nation so placed should not be ab- 
sorbed by the peoples among whom they sojourned, 
and should not disappear as a distinct and separate 
race, is contrary to reason and experience. In every 
other instance the uprooting of a people from their 
own land and the scattering of them among surround- 
ing nations, have been followed by their extinction as 
a race. But the words which pronounced the judg- 
ment upon the Jew, said also, "And yet, for all that, 
when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not re- 
ject them, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them 
utterly, and to break My covenant with them ; for I am 
the Lord their God" (Lev. xxvi. 44). And here again 
the improbable, and therefore the utterly unforeseen, 
has happened. The Jews plucked up out of their own 
land, and scattered over the whole earth, have never- 
theless been preserved. "Massacred by thousands, 
yet springing up again from their undying stock, the 



23O PREDICTIONS REGARDING THE JEWS. 

Jews appear at all times and in all regions. Their per- 
petuity, their national immortality, is at once the most 
curious problem to the political inquirer; to the re- 
ligious man a subject of profound and awful admira- 



tion/'* 
The 

SEPARATENESS, 

which is such a marked characteristic of the Jewish 
people, was also clearly predicted. It has not always 
been the desire of Jews that it should continue. There 
were many in the time of Ezekiel, as well as after- 
wards in the days of the Maccabees, who considered 
its perpetuation to be a mistake. God's answer to the 
imagination of their hearts was this: "That which 
cometh into your mind shall not be at all; in that ye 
say, we will be as the nations, as the families of the 
countries, to serve wood and stone" (Ezek. xx. 32). 
Another prediction, to which we shall again refer, rep- 
resents Israel after the dispersion as a woman who had 
been an adulteress, but whom the prophet purchases 
and weds on the condition that she will no more trans- 
gress, but abide for him many days (Hosea iii. 1-3). 
Neither their own proclivities to idolatry, nor the ter- 
rible constraint which was to be put upon them, would 
avail to blot out the distinctions which separated them 
from the nations among whom they sojourned. These 
predictions have been answered by what is one of the 
mightiest marvels of history. Rivers sometimes enter 
the sea in such volume and force that they cleave path- 
ways for miles through the ocean bed. But this force 
is soon spent, and their waters, like those of meaner 
streams, have at last to commingle with the ocean. 
We can understand how the Jews might retain their 
national, or what in their case was the same, their 
religious, characteristics for a time. Customs, insti- 

* History of the Jews, ii., pp. 398-399. 



/ 
LOSS OF GOVERNMENT, SACRIFICE, AND HOLY-PLACE. 23 1 

tutions, and beliefs, which had been established for 
ages, could not be forgotten in a day. But scattered, 
dispirited, in many cases enslaved, surrounded by 
strong temptations, and goaded by bitter and unre- 
lenting persecution to cast away the faith of their 
fathers, they have overcome every opposing influence 
and disappointed every expectation. It is difficult to 
explain this result, and it was impossible to foresee it. 
What then of the words which proclaimed it from of 
old, which said that Israel should thus remain many 
days, and that, in spite of attempts even from within 
to heathenize the nation, it should not be "as the na- 
tions, as the families of the countries ?" 

And the story is told yet more fully. The word, 
which spoke God's judgment upon their sin, foretold 

THEIR TREATMENT IN THE LANDS OF THEIR LONG SO- 
JOURN. They were, for example, to be 

COMPELLED TO POLLUTE THEMSELVES WITH IDOLATRY. 

"The Lord shall scatter thee among all peoples, from 
the one end of the earth even unto the other end of 
the earth ; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which 
thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers, even wood 
and stone" (D'eut. xxviii. 64). This doom had been 
laid upon them in the prediction which spoke of the 
earlier captivity : "The Lord shall bring thee and thy 
king which thou shalt set over thee unto a nation 
which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers ; and 
there shalt thou serve other gods, wood and stone" 
(ver. 36). That prophecy was literally fulfilled when 
both king and people were removed to Babylon. But 
it will be noticed that while there is no mention of 
their king in the subsequent prediction, the one "na- 
tion" to which the Lord should bring them is ex- 
changed for "all peoples from the one end of the earth 
unto the other end of the earth." It is clear then that 
the second prophecy contemplates a different set of cir- 
cumstances, when Israel would be without a king and 



22,2 PREDICTIONS REGARDING THE JEWS. 

the people should be scattered broadcast over the earth. 
Though the circumstances were to be changed, how- 
ever, this doom was to be repeated. They were again 
to serve other gods. The prophecy was first fulfilled 
in the forfeiture of the Temple tax for the purposes of 
Roman idolatry. The Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus 
was destroyed by fire on the same day which witnessed 
the conflagration of the Temple of Jerusalem, and the 
half-shekel paid by every Jew, no matter where he 
resided, to support the Temple-service was allotted 
by the Roman Emperors to the rebuilding and adorn- 
ment of the shrine of the Roman God. It was in vain 
the Jews refused to pay. Their resistance was se- 
verely punished, and they were compelled to take the 
money sacred to Jehovah and lay it, so to speak, upon 
the altar of Jove. The tax was long continued. But 
this was only an earnest of what lay before them. 
Neither the heathenism of the Roman Empire, nor that 
of the so-called Christianity whose priests succeeded 
to the lordship of the Roman conscience, knew any- 
thing of toleration; and we know that even till times 
comparatively recent, the persecution of this people has 
been continued. They have been compelled to worship 
the idols of Roman Catholic Christendom, gods of 
wood and stone which neither they nor their fathers 
had known. 

It was also predicted that 

THEY SHOULD HAVE N") REST. 

"And among those nations shalt thou find no ease, and 
there shall be no rest for the sole of thy foot ; but the 
Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and fail- 
ing of eyes, and pining of soul : and thy life shall hang 
in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear night and 
day, and shalt have none assurance of thy life : in the 
morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even ! and 
at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! 
for the fear of thine heart which thou shalt fear, and 



THEIR SUFFERINGS. 233 

for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see" (vv. 
65-67). "And you will I scatter among the nations, 
and I will draw out a sword after you" (Lev. 
xxvi. 33). 

The tale which these words recall is, without ex- 
ception, the most terrible and pathetic in human his- 
tory. In the beginning of the second century they 
broke out into insurrection in Babylonia, Egypt, Cy- 
rene, and Cyprus. The rebellion was suppressed with 
immense bloodshed. They were expelled from Cyprus, 
and were never after permitted to put a foot upon the 
island. If a Jew chanced to be wrecked upon its 
shores he was immediately put to death. It was said 
that in Egypt as many fell as originally escaped under 
Moses, namely, 600,000 men. To tell the story of their 
after persecutions we should have to write their his- 
tory. They have had periods of rest, but these were 
only lulls in the storm. The hatred in which they were 
held was augmented, too, by their own madness. They 
assisted the Persians, for example, to capture Jeru- 
salem in the beginning of the seventh century, and, 
after they had butchered their own Christian prison- 
ers, they purchased those of the Persians that they 
might still further glut their revenge. All this recoiled 
upon themselves. We know how they suffered during 
the Crusades. Peter the Hermit was leading his hosts 
through Germany when the cry ran from lip to lip, 
"why march against the enemies of Christ when worse 
enemies are being left behind us !" Their fury was 
accordingly let loose against the Jews, who were 
everywhere along the route attacked, plundered, and 
massacred. Fifty years afterwards a second storm 
broke upon the Jews of Germany, and fanatical mobs 
swept the cities of the Rhine, and renewed the former 
horrors. In the same country they suffered in every 
popular rising "No fanatic monk," says Milman, 
"set the populace in commotion, no public calamity 
took place, no atrocious or extravagant report was 



234 PREDICTIONS REGARDING THE JEWS. 

propagated, but it fell upon the heads of this unhappy 
caste. In Germany the black plague raged in all its 
fury, and wild superstition charged the Jews, as else- 
where, with causing and aggravating the misery, and 
themselves enjoying a guilty comparative security 
amid the universal desolation. Fatal tumults were 
caused by the march of the Flagellants, a host of mad 
enthusiasts, who passed through the cities of Germany, 
preceded by a crucifix, and scourging their naked and 
bleeding backs as they went as a punishment for their 
own offences and those of the Christian world. These 
fanatics atoned for, as they supposed, rather than ag- 
gravated, their sins against the God of Mercy, by plun- 
dering and murdering the Jews in Frankfort and other 
places. The same dark stories were industriously 
propagated, readily believed, and ferociously avenged, 
of fountains poisoned, children crucified, the Host stol- 
en and outraged. The power of their liege lord and 
Emperor, recognised by the law of the Empire, even 
when exerted for their protection, was but slightly re- 
spected and feebly enforced, especially where every 
province and almost every city had or claimed an in- 
dependent jurisdiction. Still, persecuted in one city 
they fled to another, and thus spread over the whole 
of Germany, Brunswick, Austria, Franconia, the 
Rhine Provinces, Silesia, Brandenburg, Bohemia, 
Lithuania, and Poland. Oppressed by the nobles, ana- 
thematised by the clergy, hated as rivals in trade by the 
burghers in commercial cities, despised and abhorred 
by the populace, their existence is known by the chron- 
icle, rarely of protective edicts, more often of their 
massacres."* The light which afterwards dawned on 
Christendom, brought, no doubt, alleviation for the 
lot of the Jew in Germany, as elsewhere, but the reg- 
ulations of Frederick the Great, show of what cruel 
arbitrariness a philosophic statesman could be guilty 
even in the eighteenth century when the fate of the 

* History of the Jews, iii., pp. 222, 223. 



THEIR SUFFERINGS. #35 

Jew was in question; and we still hear of the Judetir 
hetze — Jew-baiting — in that land of philosophy and 
freedom. 

The story of the Jew in England is quite as terrible. 
They were tortured and robbed by king and nobles, 
and massacred by the populace. From 500 to 1,500 
men with their wives and children perished in a rising 
in York in the twelfth century. At the end of the 
thirteenth century their whole property was confis- 
cated, and they were expelled from the kingdom with 
circumstances of great barbarity. They were not 
re-admitted till the reign of Charles the Second. We 
have to repeat the same tale when we turn to France. 
For a brief period that country was a Paradise to the 
Jews. One of the two Mayors of Narbonne was al- 
ways a Jew, and the Jewish quarter in Lyons was the 
principal part of the city. One of them was sent on 
an embassy by Charlemagne. They were physicians 
and ministers to nobles and princes, and the confiden- 
tial advisers of Louis the Debonnaire. But their emi- 
nence and wealth only marked them out the more for 
after robbery and oppression. They were plundered 
and enslaved by the children of the nobles whom they 
had served. Philip Augustus robbed them of their 
effects and banished them from the kingdom. For a 
price they were allowed to return. They came back 
only to be entrapped. Louis VIII. annulled all inter- 
est on debts due to them, declared them to be attached 
to the soil, and assigned them as property to its lords. 
In 1239 ^e mobs of Paris rose against them and com- 
mitted frightful atrocities, which were imitated in 
other parts of the kingdom. They were finally banish- 
ed from France at the end of the 14th century, a de- 
cree of exclusion which remained in force till 1794* 
The story of their sufferings in Spain is more harrow- 
ing still; but we forbear. There has been again a 
lull, broken in recent years by the persecutions in 
Russia. The contempt and hatred with which the 



236 PREDICTIONS REGARDING THE JEWS. 

Jews are still regarded there and elsewhere on the 
continent are well known, and the trembling of heart 
of which the prophet spoke has not ceased even now. 
Let me call attention in closing to another part of 
their story as told in prophecy. In the book of Ho- 
sea, to which we have already referred, we find these 
remarkable words : "The children of Israel shall abide 
many days without king, and without prince, and with- 
out sacrifice, and without pillar, and without ephod 
or teraphim" (iii. 4). We have here a prophetic 
description of some of the social and religious pe- 
culiarities of the scattered Israelites. We have seen 
that the Jews were to continue, and that they were to be 
separate. That they were to be still further separated 
from the peoples among whom they were to sojourn 
is evident from this prediction in Hosea. Tempted 
sorely to turn aside to idolatry, and terribly persecu- 
ted because of their refusal, they were nevertheless 
to preserve their ancient faith: "Thou shalt abide for 
me many days; thou shalt not play the harlot" (Hosea 
iii. 3). And now we are told that this separateness 
would be maintained by a community 

deprived of any central government 

which might shield and guide them as a people: "The 
children of Israel shall abide many days without king 
and without prince." The words have been fulfilled 
in spite of the strenuous efforts of the Jews to main- 
tain among themselves some central authority. With- 
in 60 years after the revolt under Barcochebas the 
Jews in the Roman Empire ranged themselves under 
the patriarch of Tiberias, while the Jews in the Per- 
sian dominions gave their allegiance to another of 
their number who bore the title, the Prince of the Cap- 
tivity. Both sovereignties flourished for a time. The 
Patriarch was permitted to appoint ministers, to exer- 
cise religious authority, and to receive an annual con- 
tribution from the Jews scattered throughout the Em- 



WITHOUT SACRIFICE OR HOLY PLACE, 237 

plre. "Even now," says Origen, "when the Jews are 
under the dominion of Rome, and pay the didrachma, 
how great, by the permission of Caesar, is the power 
of their Ethnarch ! I myself, have been a witness that 
it is little less than that of a king. For they secretly 
pass judgments according to their law, and some are 
capitally condemned, not with open and acknowledged 
authority, but with the connivance of the Emperor/' 
The Prince of the Captivity assumed a still greater 
state. His installation was marked by great ceremony. 
The magnates of the people assembled in a magnificent 
chamber adorned with rich curtains, and the Prince 
was seated on a lofty throne. He resided in a stately 
palace, and when he went to pay a visit to the sover- 
eign a royal carriage was placed at his service. But 
the Patriarchate withered away and was brought to a 
close about 429. And the last Prince of the Captivity 
perished on the scaffold in the beginning of the eleventh 
century. An independent kingdom of the Jews, 
which had been established in Arabia Felix more than 
a century before the Christian Era, was overthrown by 
the Mohammedans in the seventh century With 
these perished every attempt to maintain sovereign 
authority among the Jews; and they have now been 
"many days without king and without prince." 
They were also to be 

"without sacrifice and without pillar." 

The patriarchs set up "pillars" here and there during 
their wanderings, and the expression "without pillar" 
no doubt signifies that Israel should be deprived even 
of thfc simplest and rudest holy-place. How strange 
the words must have seemed to Israel, and how com- 
pletely they have been fulfilled, I need not say. Since 
the destruction of the temple they have neither had 
sacrifice nor holy-place, and for eighteen centuries 
their religion has continued, though deprived of all 



238 PREDICTIONS REGARDING THE JEWS. 

that seemed: to give it expression and to ensure its per- 
manency. They were also to remain 

WITHOUT EPHOD OR TERAPHIM. 

The ephod was used in the priestly ministrations, and 
specially in seeking to learn the mind of God. The 
teraphim appear to have been also used for the purpose 
of obtaining oracular responses. This part of the de- 
scription, therefore, implied that the priestly office 
would cease in Israel, and that all attempts to obtain 
the direction of what we may call the living voice of 
God would be given over. In the destruction of Jer- 
usalem and the subsequent troubles which fell upon 
Judea, the entire priesthood perished,* and since that 
time there has been neither ephod nor teraphim in 
Israel. The Rabbi has taken the place of the priest, 
and the unpretentious and far-off worship of the syn- 
agogue has succeeded to the solemn service and 
the near access of the Temple. But behind all the 
wrath there is mercy. Judgment paves the way for 
blessing. Hosea continues: "Afterward shall the 
children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, 
and David their King; and shall come with fear unto 
the Lord and to His goodness in the latter days" (Hos. 
iii. 5). The fulfillment of the previous words tells 
that these last are also remembered, and that God's 
arm, "though strong to smite, is also strong to save." 

CONCLUSION. 

We began with the question, "What are we to be- 
lieve?" — has it been answered? Let me remind the 
reader of two things. On one of them we are all 
agreed. No one can lift the vail which hides the 
future, and become the historian of the days that are 
yet to be. Not even the most experienced or the most 

* History of the Jews, iii., p. 414. 



CONCLUSION. 239 

gifted can tell what will be the political position of any- 
one of the leading countries of Europe at the end of 
the next 500 years or of the next century, nor paint the 
condition which its meanest hamlet will present when 
fifty years have passed away. Great as are the powers 
of the human intellect, they are limited on the side of 
the future by sharply defined and utterly impassable 
boundaries. No man can prophesy. That is one thing 
which we all admit to be beyond the possibility of 
question. The second point is that for the readers of 
these pages it is equally undeniable that Scripture not 
only contains, but abounds with, genuine prophecies. 
As our inquiry has proceeded what, in no offensive 
sense, we may call sceptical explanations have broken 
down. The predictions were not written after the 
events, for our case is founded only upon prophecies 
which have been fulfilled at, or since, the beginning 
of the Christian era. Then their accomplishment can- 
not be explained by chance. The predictions are not 
fortunate guesses, arrows shot at a venture which 
have happened to hit. The fulfilments are too many, 
the prophetic descriptions too clear and too full, many 
of the details too striking and too minute, to admit 
of their being explained by any such theory. It is 
plainly impossible to account in that way for the pro- 
phetic pictures of Egypt, of Judea and the Jews, of 
the world's history, of Christ and His work. But, 
if these predictions are not due to after-knowledge 
or to chance, there is only one explanation left. They 
are the result of foreknowledge. They tell of thought 
which holds all generations, past and future, in its 
grasp, and of purpose, which, perhaps, like the mightier 
harvests of earth, advances slowly to its fulfilment, but 
which is nevertheless surely and fully accomplished. 
In a word, they reveal God. They prove His exist- 
ence: they manifest Himself; and one cry of the 
human heart finds its answer there. The existence of 
God is not a dream. This life of ours is compassed 



240 PREDICTIONS REGARDING THE JEWS. 

about with a larger and grander. There is One for 
us to adore, to love, to lean upon. 

Then as we read these predictions another form is 
revealed. It is a striking fact that the ages have not 
been suffered to forget the name of Jesus. Neither 
persecution, nor superstition, nor perversions of the 
truth, have been able to make the world forget the 
gospel story, or to silence those who have proclaimed 
the Redeemer's name. We still look back to Bethle- 
hem, to Nazareth, to Galilee, to Calvary, to Olivet. 
And just as we look back to-day, so patriarchs and 
prophets looked forward. We look back through the 
light of history: they looked forward through a light 
which anticipated that of history — the light of prophecy. 
We have seen how the Old Testament from first to 
last glows with this anticipation, and we have com- 
pared forecast with fulfilment. The very fact that it 
was the unceasing testimony of Scripture that a Son 
of Abraham, a Jew, should become a light to the Gen- 
tiles, and that this Light did rise and is shedding its 
beams upon us now, is enough to overwhelm doubt; 
and the picture of His character, of His sufferings, 
of the nature of His work for us, forms a founda- 
tion for our trust, which, till these things be explained 
away, nothing can shake. And here another cry of 
the heart is answered. There is a Mediator between 
Gocf and man: One who is ours, and His : One who is 
for Him, and who is also for ourselves. 

But when these points are settled, they reveal one 
need more. We desire nearness to our Father and 
our Redeemer: we thirst for likeness to them. In 
other words, we cry for light which will reveal them, 
and make plain our pathway. And need we search 
further for the answer? Is it not in that book, which 
is without a peer, and which is stamped as Divine by 
the impress of knowledge such as man has never 
boasted? He who has cared for every other want, 
and^ who has made need but a pathway into His ful- 



CONCLUSION. 241 

ness, has cared for this, the deepest and most clamant 
want of all. Let us not spurn the gift. Let us not 
neglect it. It is heaven's light "whereunto ye do well 
that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark 
place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in 
your hearts," 



THE WORKS OF JOHN URQUHART. 



Cbe Bible : Tt$ Structure 

and Purpose. 

By JOHN URQUHART, 

cAuthor of "Recent Discoveries and the 'Bible/* "The Wonders 

of Prophecy," "How Old is Man/' "inspiration and 

Accuracy of the Holy Scriptures," "Roger's 

Reasons/* etc* 

Member of the Biblical Archaeological Society and Associate 
of the Victoria Institute. 



Introduction by Dr. ARTHUR T. PIERSON. 

Wm. Phillips Hall, President American Bible League, 
writes : 

I believe I am fully warranted in endorsing " The Bible : 
Its Structure and Purpose" as one of the most valuable 
works already published in the grand work of Bible defence 
against the sinful attacks of destructive scholastic Biblical 
criticism. All of Doctor Urquhart's works in this field are 
of priceless worth to the cause of true Christianity, but none 
more so than the work in question. 

It should be found in every Minister's library, and in the 
hands of every lover of the Word of God. You have ren- 
dered the cause of Christ great service in the publication of 

this work . 

Price per vol., 246 pp., cloth, $ 1 .25 net. 
The set (4 vols.), $400 net. 



Send for Complete Prospectus and the Opinions 
of Lawyers, Pastors, Christian Workers and 
The Press of this Valuable Work. 

GOSPEL PUBLISHING HOUSE, 

B. T. BASS, MANAGER. 

54 W. 22d STREET, NEW YORK CITY. 



THE WORKS OF JOHN URQUHART. 



NEW POPULAR EDITION. 

The Inspiration and Accuracy 
of the Holy Scriptures. 

By JOHN URaUHART. 

With Introduction by Dr. DANIEL S, GREGORY, Secretary 
of the American Bible League. 

Contents : Part I, The Scripture Doctrine of Inspiration; 
Part II, The Genesis of Rationalism; Part HI, Critical Results 
Tested by Modern Discovery ; Appendix. Dean Farrar on 
DANIEL. 



SOME REVIEWS. 

The Record says : " We have several books on our table 
waiting to be considered, which fall under the above heading 
(Recent Biblical Literature). We have no hesitation in 
giving the first place to the volume on " The Inspiration and 
Accuracy of the Holy Scriptures," which the Rev. J. Urqu- 
hart, editor of Word and Work, and already known as a 
writer on Biblical subjects, has just given to the world." 

The Christian World says: "It is written in a lively and 
interesting style, and shows considerable research, as well as 
much earnestness of spirit." 

The Christian says : " Many will be thankful to Mr. Urqu- 
hart for his book, which is written in vigorous English, and 
is full of important facts and arguments for the integrity 
and authority of Holy Scripture." 

The Scotsman says: "The author is deeply interested in 
his subject; he is thoroughly in earnest; he writes clearly 
and simply, and is easy of apprehension, and has gathered a 
large amount of valuable information," 

The Sword and Trowel says : " Mr. Urquhart has, in this 
volume, done yeoman service to 'the cause of God and 
Truth,' and has made the whole Church of Christ his debtor. 
Let those who prize the Inspired Word see that this valuable 
contribution in its defence is circulated wherever it has been 
or may be the subject of attack." 

The Rev. Hubert BrooTce, in The Life of Faith, says: 
"With admirable skill the writer has defined the particular 
points advanced by the critics, and then has heaped up the 
demonstrations of the truth of Scripture, till it shines out 
like gold refined seven times in the fire." 

New Popular Edition. 576 pp., cloth, $1.25 net. 
Former price, $2.00, 

12 



THE WORKS OF JOHN URQUHART. 

THE WONDERS OF PROPHECY ; 

Or, What Are We To Believe? 

The Testimony of Fulfilled Prophecy. 

By JOHN TJRaUHART. 

Contents: I, A Serious Question; II, Can the Question be 
Answered; III, Predictions regarding Tyre and Sidon; IV, 
Predictions regarding Egypt ; V, Predictions regarding 
Egypt (continued); VI, Idumea and the Sea Coast of Pales- 
tine; VII, Judea and Babylon; VIII, A Prophetic Forecast of 
the World's Entire History; IX, Prophecies Fulfilled in the 
Coming, the History and the Work of Christ; X, Predictions 
Fulfilled in the History of the Jews. 

SOME REVIEWS. 

British Weekly : " The best popular statement of the argu- 
ment from Prophecy anywhere to be found." 

C. H. Spurgeon : "More interesting than any novel." 

The Sword and Trowel : " This precious treatise should be 
scattered by tens of thousands." 

The Christian: "This book, so small in bulk but so large 
in thought, sets forth a great mass of such testimony in lines 
so clear and powerful that we pity the man who could read 
it without amazement and awe. ... It is the very book to 
put into the hands of an intelligent Agnostic, so clear and 
fair and satisfactory is the statement of the argument from 
its careful commencement, through its well-defined progress, 
to its magnificent conclusion." 

231 pp., cloth. 75c. net. 



HOW OLD IS MAN? 

Some Misunderstood Chapters in 
Scripture Chronology. 

By JOHN URQUHART. 

Contents : I, Were the Scriptures intended to Provide an 
Exact Ancient Chronology ? II, Some Characteristics of 
Scripture Reckonings; III, The Genealogies of Genesis; IV, 
When Did the Flood Occur? V, How Old is Man? 

A very interesting discussion on the subject. 

116 pp., cloth. Price 75c, post-paid. 

XX 



THE WORKS OF JOHN URQUHART. 



BOOKS FOR THE TIMES. 

RECENT DISCOVERIES 
AND THE BIBLE; 

Or, The New Biblical Guide. 

" The Fullest and Most Reliable Account of the Recent ** 
Remarkable Confirmations of Scripture. 

By JOHN TJBQUHART. 

COMPLETE IN EIGHT VOLUMES. 

Vol. I.— The Story of the Higher Criticism ; What the 
Critics Wish to Do with the Bible; Why the Critics Cannot 
Succeed ; The Story of the Discoveries ; Confirmations of 
Genesis; The Creation History; The Creation of Man; Where 
Was Paradise? The Alleged "Myths" of Genesis; The Fall; 
The Foundation of Human History; The Antediluvians; The 
Deluge; The Unity of Man; Nimrod's Times and Work. 

Vol. n.— The Tower of Babel; Babylon, the Metropolis of 
the Nations; Abraham and his Times; The Times of Isaac 
and Jacob; The Life and Times of Joseph. 

Vol. III.— The Life and Times of Joseph (continued); Israel 
in Egypt; The Exodus; The March from Egypt to Sinai. ^ 

Vol. IV.— Sinai and the Desert Journey; The Conquests on 
the East of the Jordan; the Problem of Balaam; The Life 
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Vol. V.— The Book of Judges and the Tel-el Amarna Tab- 
lets; The Books of Samuel; The First Book of Kings. 

Vol. VI.— The Second Book of Kings; The Books of Chron- 
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Vol. Vn.— Are There Two Isaiahs? Jeremiah; Jonah; 
Nahum; Daniel; Confirmation of the New Testament; The 
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Vol. VHI.— Papers by Dr. W. L. Baxter, M. A.; The Bishop 
of Durham; Principal Douglas; Professor Sayce; John Urqu- 
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The Bock says : " It teems with up-to-date information. It 
is a book that ought to be in every student's hand, yet it is 
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Price $1.25 per vol* 88*00 the set of 8 vols. 

Each volume may be obtained separately. 

12 






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